Poems (Chilton, 1885)/Epicedium
EPICEDIUM.
The fires of youth no longer burn, Their fitful flames are quenched at last;And here within this little urn Repose the ashes of my past.
And is this capet mortuum all Now left me of my vanished years?Am I no longer held in thrall By youthful joys and hopes and fears?
'Tis even so; the mountain-side Is scaled at last; and now I rest,While I survey from life's divide My path that slopes towards the west:—
The sad and sober west, where glow The embers of the dying day,That, as the night winds cease to blow, Fall into ashes cold and gray.
O let me falter not, but tread Firmly the downward path, nor yearnFor my lost youth whose ashes dead Fill up the measure of this urn.