June 13 — Life
It is a toy: a jingling bauble gay,
That children grasp with wondering, wide-eyed pleasure;
Soil it with too fierce use, and find their treasure
But rags and tinsel, which at close of day
Falls from their weary hands. It is a page
Whereon the child scribbles unmeaning scrawls.
Youth’s glowing pen indites sweet madrigals.
Man tells a history, and sad old age—
Seeing that all the space that he hath writ before
But wrote in varying ways his folly large—
Sets “Vanity” upon the meagre marge.
And last Time prints “The End” and turns it o’er.