| Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917. |
| |
| 207. Old Age |
| | | By Percy Mackaye |
| |
| |
| OLD AGE, the irrigator, | |
| Digs our bosoms straighter, | |
| More workable and deeper still | |
| To turn the ever-running mill | |
| Of nights and days. He makes a trough | 5 |
| To drain our passions off, | |
| That used so beautiful to lie | |
| Variegated to the sky, | |
| On waste moorlands of the heart— | |
| Haunts of idleness, and art | 10 |
| Still half-dreaming. All their piedness | |
| Rank and wild and shallow wideness, | |
| Desultory splendors, he | |
| Straightens conscientiously | |
| To a practicable sluice | 15 |
| Meant for workaday, plain use. | |
| All the mists of early dawn, | |
| Twilit marshes, being gone | |
| With their glamor, and their stench, | |
| There is left—a narrow trench. | 20 |
| |
|
|
|
