The Voice of Age by Edwin Arlington Robinson

SHE'D look upon us, if she could, / As hard as Rhadamanthus would; / Yet one may see, - who sees her face, / Her crown of silver and of lace, / Her mystical serene address

Of age alloyed with loveliness, -

That she would not annihilate

The frailest of things animate.

She has opinions of our ways, / And if we're not all mad, she says, -

If our ways are not wholly worse

Than others, for not being hers, -

There might somehow be found a few

Less insane things for us to do, / And we might have a little heed

Of what Belshazzar couldn't read.

She feels, with all our furniture, / Room yet for something more secure

Than our self-kindled aureoles

To guide our poor forgotten souls;

But when we have explained that grace

Dwells now in doing for the race, / She nods - as if she were relieved; / Almost as if she were deceived.

She frowns at much of what she hears,

And shakes her head, and has her fears; / Though none may know, by any chance, / What rose-leaf ashes of romance

Are faintly stirred by later days

That would be well enough, she says,

If only people were more wise, / And grown-up children used their eyes.