'Listen! When your hair, like mine,
⁠Takes a tint of silver gray;
When your eyes, with dimmer shine,
⁠Watch life's bubbles float away:

When you, young man, have borne like me
The weary weight of sixty-three,
Then shall penance sore be paid
⁠For those hours so wildly squandered;
And the words that now fall dead
⁠On your ear, be deeply pondered—
Pondered and approved at last:
But their virtue will be past!

'Glorious is the prize of Duty,
⁠Though she be "a serious power";
Treacherous all the lures of Beauty,
⁠Thorny bud and poisonous flower!

'Mirth is but a mad beguiling
⁠Of the golden-gifted time;
Love—a demon-meteor, wiling
⁠Heedless feet to gulfs of crime.