Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.
Old Age
By Percy Mackaye
O
Digs our bosoms straighter,
More workable and deeper still
To turn the ever-running mill
Of nights and days. He makes a trough
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
Still half-dreaming. All their piedness
Rank and wild and shallow wideness,
Desultory splendors, he
Straightens conscientiously
To a practicable sluice
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.