THE LYRE OF ANACREON

THE minstrel of the classic lay

Of love and wine who sings

Still found the fingers run astray

That touched the rebel strings.

Of Cadmus he would fain have sung,

Of Atreus and his line;

But all the jocund echoes rung

With songs of love and wine.

Ah, brothers! I would fain have caught

Some fresher fancy's gleam;

My truant accents find, unsought,

The old familiar theme.

Love, Love! but not the sportive child

With shaft and twanging bow,

Whose random arrows drove us wild

Some threescore years ago;

Not Eros, with his joyous laugh,

The urchin blind and bare,

But Love, with spectacles and staff,

And scanty, silvered hair.

Our heads with frosted locks are white,

Our roofs are thatched with snow,

But red, in chilling winter's spite,

Our hearts and hearthstones glow.

Our old acquaintance, Time, drops in,

And while the running sands

Their golden thread unheeded spin,

He warms his frozen hands.

Stay, winged hours, too swift, too sweet,

And waft this message o'er

To all we miss, from all we meet

On life's fast-crumbling shore:

Say that, to old affection true,

We hug the narrowing chain

That binds our hearts,— alas, how few

The links that yet remain!

The fatal touch awaits them all

That turns the rocks to dust;

From year to year they break and fall,—

They break, but never rust.

Say if one note of happier strain

This worn-out harp afford,—

One throb that trembles, not in vain,—

Their memory lent its chord.

Say that when Fancy closed her wings

And Passion quenched his fire,

Love, Love, still echoed from the strings

As from Anacreon's lyre!