The fires of youth no longer burn,
Their fitful flames are quenched at last;
And here within this little urn
Repose the ashes of my past.
And is this capet mortuum all
Now left me of my vanished years?
Am I no longer held in thrall
By youthful joys and hopes and fears?
'Tis even so; the mountain-side
Is scaled at last; and now I rest,
While I survey from life's divide
My path that slopes towards the west:—
The sad and sober west, where glow
The embers of the dying day,
That, as the night winds cease to blow,
Fall into ashes cold and gray.
O let me falter not, but tread
Firmly the downward path, nor yearn
For my lost youth whose ashes dead
Fill up the measure of this urn.