The Lyre Of Anacreon

The minstrel of the classic lay     Of love and wine who sings     Still found the fingers run astray     That touched the rebel strings.     Of Cadmus he would fain have sung,     Of Atreus and his line;     But all the jocund echoes rung     With songs of love and wine.     Ah, brothers! I would fain have caught     Some fresher fancy's gleam;     My truant accents find, unsought,     The old familiar theme.     Love, Love! but not the sportive child     With shaft and twanging bow,     Whose random arrows drove us wild     Some threescore years ago;     Not Eros, with his joyous laugh,     The urchin blind and bare,     But Love, with spectacles and staff,     And scanty, silvered hair.     Our heads with frosted locks are white,     Our roofs are thatched with snow,     But red, in chilling winter's spite,     Our hearts and hearthstones glow.     Our old acquaintance, Time, drops in,     And while the running sands     Their golden thread unheeded spin,     He warms his frozen hands.     Stay, winged hours, too swift, too sweet,     And waft this message o'er     To all we miss, from all we meet     On life's fast-crumbling shore:     Say that, to old affection true,     We hug the narrowing chain     That binds our hearts, - alas, how few     The links that yet remain!     The fatal touch awaits them all     That turns the rocks to dust;     From year to year they break and fall, -     They break, but never rust.     Say if one note of happier strain     This worn-out harp afford, -     One throb that trembles, not in vain, -     Their memory lent its chord.     Say that when Fancy closed her wings     And Passion quenched his fire,     Love, Love, still echoed from the strings     As from Anacreon's lyre!