Percy Mackaye

OLD AGE

Old Age, the irrigator,

Digs our bosoms straighter,

More workable and deeper still

To turn the ever-running mill

Of nights and days. He makes a trough

To drain our passions off,

That used so beautiful to lie

Variegated to the sky,

On waste moorlands of the heart—

197Haunts of idleness, and art

Still half-dreaming. All their piedness,

Rank and wild and shallow wideness,

Desultory splendors, he

Straightens conscientiously

To a practicable sluice

Meant for workaday, plain use.

All the mists of early dawn,

Twilit marshes, being gone

With their glamor, and their stench,

There is left—a narrow trench.

SONG FROM “MATER”

Long ago, in the young moonlight,

I lost my heart to a hero;

Strong and tender and stern and right,

Darker than night,

And terribler than Nero.

Heigh, but he was dear, O!

And there, to bind our fellowship,

I laughed at him; and a moment after,

I laughed again till he bit his lip,

For the test of love is laughter.

“Lord and master, look up!” I cried;

“I wreathe your brow with a laurel!

Gloom and wisdom and right and pride

Cast them aside,

And kiss, and cure our quarrel.

Never mind the moral!”

Alas! with strange and saddened eyes

He looked on me; and my mirth grew dafter,

To feel the flush of his dark surprise;

For the zest of love is laughter.

198Long ago, in the old moonlight,

I lost my hero and lover;

Strong and tender and stern and right,

Never shall night

Nor day his brow uncover.

Ah, my heart, that is over!

Yet still, for joy of the fellowship

That bound us both through the years long after,

I laugh to think how he bit his lip;

For the test of love—

And the best of love—is laughter.