28.05.2007, 17:16
To Bayard Taylor
On his fourtieth birthday
“Whom the gods love die young,” we have been told,
And wise of some the saying seems to be;
Of others foolish; as it is of thee,
Who proven hast, “Whom the gods love live old.”
For have not forty seasons o’er thee rolled,
The worst propitious, - setting like the sea
Towards the heaven of prosperity,
Now full in sight, so fair the wind doth hold?
Hast thou not fame, the poet’s chief derise;
A wife, whom thou dost love, who loves thee well;
A child, in whom your differing natures blend;
And friends, troops of them, who respect, - admire?
(How deeply one, it suits not now to tell
Such lives are long, and have a perfect end.
On his fourtieth birthday
“Whom the gods love die young,” we have been told,
And wise of some the saying seems to be;
Of others foolish; as it is of thee,
Who proven hast, “Whom the gods love live old.”
For have not forty seasons o’er thee rolled,
The worst propitious, - setting like the sea
Towards the heaven of prosperity,
Now full in sight, so fair the wind doth hold?
Hast thou not fame, the poet’s chief derise;
A wife, whom thou dost love, who loves thee well;
A child, in whom your differing natures blend;
And friends, troops of them, who respect, - admire?
(How deeply one, it suits not now to tell
Such lives are long, and have a perfect end.