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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=341855" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Old Gentleman With The Amber Snuff-Box</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">_The old gentleman, tapping his amber snuff-box<br>(A heart-shaped snuff-box with a golden clasp)<br>Stared at the dying fire. 'I'd like them all<br>To understand, when I am gone,' he muttered.<br>'But how to do it delicately! I can't<br>Apologize. I'll hint at it ... in verse;<br>And, to be sure that Rosalind reads it through,<br>I'll make it an appendix to my will!'<br>--Still cynical, you see. He couldn't help it.<br>He had seen much, felt much. He snapped the snuff box,<br>Shook his white periwig, trimmed a long quill pen,<br>And then began to write, most carefully,<br>These couplets, in the old heroic style:--_</div><div style="margin:10px 0">O, had I known in boyhood, only known<br>The few sad truths that time has made my own,<br>I had not lost the best that youth can give,<br>Nay, life itself, in learning how to live.<br>This laboring heart would not be tired so soon,<br>This jaded blood would jog to a livelier tune:<br>And some few friends, could I begin again,<br>Should know more happiness, and much less pain.<br>I should not wound in ignorance, nor turn<br>In foolish pride from those for whom I yearn.<br>I should have kept nigh half the friends I've lost,<br>And held for dearest those I wronged the most.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yet, when I see more cunning men evade<br>With colder tact, the blunders that I made;<br>Sometimes I wonder if the better part<br>Is not still mine, who lacked their subtle art.<br>For I have conned my book in harsher schools,<br>And learned from struggling what they worked by rules;<br>Learned--with some pain--more quickly to forgive<br>My fellow-blunderers, while they learn to live;<br>Learned--with some tears--to keep a steadfast mind,<br>And think more kindly of my own poor kind.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">_He read the verses through, shaking his wig.<br>'Perhaps ... perhaps'--he whispered to himself,<br>'I'd better leave it to the will of God.<br>They might upset my own. I do not think<br>They'd understand. Jocelyn might, perhaps;<br>And Dick, if only they were left alone.<br>But Rosalind never; nor that nephew of mine,<br>The witty politician. No. No. No.<br>They'd say my mind was wandering, I'm afraid.'<br>So, with a frozen face, reluctantly,<br>He tossed his verses into the dying fire,<br>And watched the sparks fly upward.<br>There, at dawn,<br>They found him, cold and stiff by the cold hearth,<br>His amber snuff-box in his ivory hand.<br>'You see,' they said, 'he never needed friends.<br>He had that curious antique frozen way.<br>He had no heart--only an amber snuff-box.<br>He died quite happily, taking a pinch of snuff.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">His nephew, that engaging politician,<br>Inherited the snuff-box, and remarked<br>His epitaph should be 'Snuffed Out.' The clubs<br>Laughed, and the statesman's reputation grew._</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Alfred+Noyes">Alfred Noyes</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=341855" data-title="The Old Gentleman With The Amber Snuff-Box de Alfred Noyes" data-description="_The old gentleman, tapping his amber snuff-box
(A heart-shaped snuff-box with a golden clasp)
Stared at the dying fire. 'I'd like them all
To understand, when I am gone,' he muttered.
'But how to do it delicately! I can't
Apologize. I'll hint at ..."></div>
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