A Sage

He knows dreams never kept their promise yet.
Henceforth without desire, without regret,
He cons the page of sober tenderness
In which some poet, skilled in life's distress,
Breathed into olden, golden verse his sighs.
Sometimes he lifts his head, and feeds his eyes,
With all the wonderment that wise men know,
On fields, and clouds that over forests go,
And with their calmness sated is his thought.

He knows how dearly fair renown is bought:
He too, in earlier days of stinging strength,
Sought that vain victory to find at length
Sadness at his desire's precipitous brink....
Of what avail, he thought, to act and think,
When human joy holds all in one rapt look?
His mind at peace reads Nature like a book.
He smiles, remembering his youth's unrest,
And, though none know it, he is wholly blest.