| |
| THE PLAY was done; | |
| The mimic lovers of the stage | |
| Were safe united, with their mimic battles won; | |
| But while the prompter closed his well-scored page, | |
| And on his bell a willing finger laid, | 5 |
| An old man, stately, kind, and hale, | |
| In mould of courtly fashion made, | |
| Set forth the moral of the tale. | |
| |
| Much bent with time, | |
| The frost that silvered on his brow | 10 |
| Had left its markings, lined and figured like the rime, | |
| Which on the pane the warming noon-day glow | |
| Has smoothed and softened with its cheery smile. | |
| And while he spoke they lent him willing ears; | |
| For warmest youth of heart the while | 15 |
| Shone through the winter of his years. | |
| |
| ’T was not the words, | |
| For they were simple as the tales | |
| Some good old nurse’s well-taxed memory hoards | |
| Against the time when fairy folk-lore fails. | 20 |
| He spoke in well-worn terms of good advice: | |
| How fathers should not draw too ready rein, | |
| Nor sons take umbrage in a trice | |
| At fathers’ counsels,—these and more again. | |
| |
| But as he spoke | 25 |
| The threadbare words they knew so well, | |
| Came rippling streamlets of applause that broke | |
| In throbbing oceans as the curtain fell. | |
| For youth and age, pride, poverty, e’en sin, | |
| Fair maid and bloodless pedagogue, | 30 |
| All felt the world of nearer kin | |
| The while John Gilbert spoke—The Epilogue. | |
| |
