29
For steps together tottering to the grave,
Hath bid the perfect golden title wait.
Rather, if silver this, if that be gold,
From good to better changed an age's track,
Must it as baser metal be enrolled,
That day of days, a quarter-century back.
Yet ah, its hopes, its joys were golden too,
But golden of the fairy gold of dreams:
To feel is but to dream; until we do,
There's nought that is, and all we see but seems.
What was or seemed it needed cares and tears,
And deeds together done, and trials past,
And all the subtlest alchemy of years
To change to genuine substance here at last.
Your fairy gold is silver sure to day;
Your ore by crosses many, many a loss,
As in refiners' fires, hath purged away
What erst it had of earthy human dross.
Come years as many yet, and as they go
In human life's great crucible shall they
Transmute, so potent are the spells they know,
Into pure gold the silver of to-day.
