Gold or silver, every day...

Gold or silver, every day,

Dies to gray.

There are knots in every skein.

Hours of work and hours of play

Fade away

Into one immense Inane.

Shadow and substance, chaff and grain,

Are as vain

As the foam or as the spray.

Life goes crooning, faint and fain,

One refrain:

‘ If it could be always May!’

Though the earth be green and gay,

Though, they say,

Man the cup of heaven may drain;

Though, his little world to sway,

He display

Hoard on hoard of pith and brain:

Autumn brings a mist and rain

That constrain

Him and his to know decay,

Where undimmed the lights that wane

Would remain,

If it could be always May.

YEA, alas, must turn to NAY,

Flesh to clay.

Chance and Time are ever twain.

Men may scoff, and men may pray,

But they pay

Every pleasure with a pain.

Life may soar, and Fortune deign

To explain

Where her prizes hide and stay;

But we lack the lusty train

We should gain,

If it could be always May.