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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=472585" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Old Player</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">THE curtain rose; in thunders long and loud<br>The galleries rung; the veteran actor bowed.<br>In flaming line the telltales of the stage<br>Showed on his brow the autograph of age;<br>Pale, hueless waves amid his clustered hair,<br>And umbered shadows, prints of toil and care;<br>Round the wide circle glanced his vacant eye,--<br>He strove to speak,--his voice was but a sigh.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Year after year had seen its short-lived race<br>Flit past the scenes and others take their place;<br>Yet the old prompter watched his accents still,<br>His name still flaunted on the evening's bill.<br>Heroes, the monarchs of the scenic floor,<br>Had died in earnest and were heard no more;<br>Beauties, whose cheeks such roseate bloom o'er-spread<br>They faced the footlights in unborrowed red,<br>Had faded slowly through successive shades<br>To gray duennas, foils of younger maids;<br>Sweet voices lost the melting tones that start<br>With Southern throbs the sturdy Saxon heart,<br>While fresh sopranos shook the painted sky<br>With their long, breathless, quivering locust-cry.<br>Yet there he stood,--the man of other days,<br>In the clear present's full, unsparing blaze,<br>As on the oak a faded leaf that clings<br>While a new April spreads its burnished wings.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">How bright yon rows that soared in triple tier,<br>Their central sun the flashing chandelier!<br>How dim the eye that sought with doubtful aim<br>Some friendly smile it still might dare to claim<br>How fresh these hearts! his own how worn and cold!<br>Such the sad thoughts that long-drawn sigh had told.<br>No word yet faltered on his trembling tongue;<br>Again, again, the crashing galleries rung.<br>As the old guardsman at the bugle's blast<br>Hears in its strain the echoes of the past,<br>So, as the plaudits rolled and thundered round,<br>A life of memories startled at the sound.<br>He lived again,--the page of earliest days,--<br>Days of small fee and parsimonious praise;<br>Then lithe young Romeo--hark that silvered tone,<br>From those smooth lips--alas! they were his own.<br>Then the bronzed Moor, with all his love and woe,<br>Told his strange tale of midnight melting snow;<br>And dark--plumed Hamlet, with his cloak and blade,<br>Looked on the royal ghost, himself a shade.<br>All in one flash, his youthful memories came,<br>Traced in bright hues of evanescent flame,<br>As the spent swimmer's in the lifelong dream,<br>While the last bubble rises through the stream.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Call him not old, whose visionary brain<br>Holds o'er the past its undivided reign.<br>For him in vain the envious seasons roll<br>Who bears eternal summer in his soul.<br>If yet the minstrel's song, the poet's lay,<br>Spring with her birds, or children at their play,<br>Or maiden's smile, or heavenly dream of art,<br>Stir the few life-drops creeping round his heart,<br>Turn to the record where his years are told,--<br>Count his gray hairs,--they cannot make him old!<br>What magic power has changed the faded mime?<br>One breath of memory on the dust of time.<br>As the last window in the buttressed wall<br>Of some gray minster tottering to its fall,<br>Though to the passing crowd its hues are spread,<br>A dull mosaic, yellow, green, and red,<br>Viewed from within, a radiant glory shows<br>When through its pictured screen the sunlight flows,<br>And kneeling pilgrims on its storied pane<br>See angels glow in every shapeless stain;<br>So streamed the vision through his sunken eye,<br>Clad in the splendors of his morning sky.<br>All the wild hopes his eager boyhood knew,<br>All the young fancies riper years proved true,<br>The sweet, low-whispered words, the winning glance<br>From queens of song, from Houris of the dance,<br>Wealth's lavish gift, and Flattery's soothing phrase,<br>And Beauty's silence when her blush was praise,<br>And melting Pride, her lashes wet with tears,<br>Triumphs and banquets, wreaths and crowns and cheers,<br>Pangs of wild joy that perish on the tongue,<br>And all that poets dream, but leave unsung!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In every heart some viewless founts are fed<br>From far-off hillsides where the dews were shed;<br>On the worn features of the weariest face<br>Some youthful memory leaves its hidden trace,<br>As in old gardens left by exiled kings<br>The marble basins tell of hidden springs,<br>But, gray with dust, and overgrown with weeds,<br>Their choking jets the passer little heeds,<br>Till time's revenges break their seals away,<br>And, clad in rainbow light, the waters play.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Good night, fond dreamer! let the curtain fall<br>The world's a stage, and we are players all.<br>A strange rehearsal! Kings without their crowns,<br>And threadbare lords, and jewel-wearing clowns,<br>Speak the vain words that mock their throbbing hearts,<br>As Want, stern prompter! spells them out their parts.<br>The tinselled hero whom we praise and pay<br>Is twice an actor in a twofold play.<br>We smile at children when a painted screen<br>Seems to their simple eyes a real scene;<br>Ask the poor hireling, who has left his throne<br>To seek the cheerless home he calls his own,<br>Which of his double lives most real seems,<br>The world of solid fact or scenic dreams?<br>Canvas, or clouds,--the footlights, or the spheres,--<br>The play of two short hours, or seventy years?<br>Dream on! Though Heaven may woo our open eyes,<br>Through their closed lids we look on fairer skies;<br>Truth is for other worlds, and hope for this;<br>The cheating future lends the present's bliss;<br>Life is a running shade, with fettered hands,<br>That chases phantoms over shifting sands;<br>Death a still spectre on a marble seat,<br>With ever clutching palms and shackled feet;<br>The airy shapes that mock life's slender chain,<br>The flying joys he strives to clasp in vain,<br>Death only grasps; to live is to pursue,--<br>Dream on! there 's nothing but illusion true!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Oliver+Wendell+Holmes">Oliver Wendell Holmes</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=472585" data-title="The Old Player de Oliver Wendell Holmes" data-description="THE curtain rose; in thunders long and loud
The galleries rung; the veteran actor bowed.
In flaming line the telltales of the stage
Showed on his brow the autograph of age;
Pale, hueless waves amid his clustered hair,
And umbered shadows, prints o..."></div>
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