I was Mojeska's leading man <br />And famous parts I used to play, <br />But now I do the best I can <br />To earn my bread from day to day; <br />Here in this Burg of Breaking Hears, <br />Where one wins as a thousand fail, <br />I play a score of scurvy parts <br />Till Time writes Finis to my tale. <br /> <br />My wife is dead, my daughter wed, <br />With heaps of trouble of their own; <br />And though I hold aloft my head <br />I'm humble, scared and all alone . . . <br />To-night I burn each photograph, <br />Each record of my former fame, <br />And oh, how bitterly I laugh <br />And feed them to the hungry flame! <br /> <br />Behold how handsome I was then - <br />What glowing eye, what noble mien; <br />I towered above my fellow men, <br />And proudly strode the painted scene. <br />Ah, Vanity! What fools are we, <br />With empty ends and foolish aims . . . <br />There now, I fling with savage glee <br />My David Garrick to the flames. <br /> <br />"Is this a dagger that I see": <br />Oh, how I used to love that speech; <br />We were old-fashioned - "hams" maybe, <br />Yet we Young Arrogance could teach. <br />"Out, out brief candle!" There are gone <br />My Lear, my Hamlet and MacBeth; <br />And now by ashes cold and wan <br />I wait my cue, my prompter Death. <br /> <br />This life of ours is just a play; <br />Its end is fashioned from the start; <br />Fate writes each word we have to say, <br />And puppet-like we strut our part. <br />Once I wore laurels on my brow, <br />But now I wait, a sorry clown, <br />To make my furtive, farewell bow . . . <br />Haste Time! Oh, ring the Curtain down.<br /><br />Robert William Service<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/old-trouper/
