Ballade Of Truisms

Gold or silver, every day,     Dies to gray.     There are knots in every skein.     Hours of work and hours of play     Fade away     Into one immense Inane.     Shadow and substance, chaff and grain,     Are as vain     As the foam or as the spray.     Life goes crooning, faint and fain,     One refrain:     'If it could be always May!'     Though the earth be green and gay,     Though, they say,     Man the cup of heaven may drain;     Though, his little world to sway,     He display     Hoard on hoard of pith and brain:     Autumn brings a mist and rain     That constrain     Him and his to know decay,     Where undimmed the lights that wane     Would remain,     If it could be always May.     YEA, alas, must turn to NAY,     Flesh to clay.     Chance and Time are ever twain.     Men may scoff, and men may pray,     But they pay     Every pleasure with a pain.     Life may soar, and Fortune deign     To explain     Where her prizes hide and stay;     But we lack the lusty train     We should gain,     If it could be always May.     Envoy     Time, the pedagogue, his cane     Might retain,     But his charges all would stray     Truanting in every lane -     Jack with Jane -     If it could be always May.