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