‘Anticipation is sweeter than realisation.’ <br /> <br />It may be, yet I have not found it so. <br /> In those first golden dreams of future fame <br /> I did not find such happiness as came <br />When toil was crowned with triumph. Now I know <br />My words have recognition, and will go <br /> Straight to some listening heart, my early aim, <br /> To win the idle glory of a name, <br />Pales like a candle in the noonday’s glow. <br /> <br />So with the deeper joys of which I dreamed: <br /> Life yields more rapture than did childhood’s fancies, <br /> And each year brings more pleasure than I waited. <br />Friendship proves truer than of old it seemed, <br /> And, all beyond youth’s passion-hued romances, <br /> Love is more perfect than anticipated.<br /><br />Ella Wheeler Wilcox<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/refuted/