That sad and worn and wrinkled face—
The feeble semblance you can trace
Of one who knew another day;
And, gray and tattered, like his master,
With solitude and chill disaster,
A quaint old owl, still staring wide,
Sits on a table at his side.
Through all the long eventful years,
Rainbowed with joys, bedewed with tears,
The man had kept his tryst with fate,
True to his saying, "I shall wait."
His purse and little stint of land
Had vanished all, an idle hand
And dreaming brain, that builded fair
Its gorgeous tableaux in the air,
But never in its mazy coil
Had fixed the ritual of toil;
And yet in all his dreary waiting,
And vexed with troubles past relating,
He had maintained the wizard bird
Though unillumined and unheard.
To-night the rounded fateful time
Was trilling to its silvery chime,
For all the vision of the past,
In glorious truth arose at last—
A queenly city on her throne
Ruled where the olden firs made moan,
But what was that to him? He stood
Without the gates in solitude,
A haunting shadow of the meed
That answers manhood's ringing creed;
The feeble semblance you can trace
Of one who knew another day;
And, gray and tattered, like his master,
With solitude and chill disaster,
A quaint old owl, still staring wide,
Sits on a table at his side.
Through all the long eventful years,
Rainbowed with joys, bedewed with tears,
The man had kept his tryst with fate,
True to his saying, "I shall wait."
His purse and little stint of land
Had vanished all, an idle hand
And dreaming brain, that builded fair
Its gorgeous tableaux in the air,
But never in its mazy coil
Had fixed the ritual of toil;
And yet in all his dreary waiting,
And vexed with troubles past relating,
He had maintained the wizard bird
Though unillumined and unheard.
To-night the rounded fateful time
Was trilling to its silvery chime,
For all the vision of the past,
In glorious truth arose at last—
A queenly city on her throne
Ruled where the olden firs made moan,
But what was that to him? He stood
Without the gates in solitude,
A haunting shadow of the meed
That answers manhood's ringing creed;
