Players
And after all -- and after all,
Our passionate prayers, and sighs, and tears,
Is life a reckless carnival?
And are they lost, our golden years?
Ah, no; ah, no; for, long ago,
Ere time could sear, or care could fret,
There was a youth called Romeo,
There was a maid named Juliet.
The players of the past are gone;
The races rise; the races pass;
And softly over all is drawn
The quiet Curtain of the Grass.
But when the world went wild with Spring,
What days we had! Do you forget?
When I of all the world was King,
And you were my Queen Juliet?
The things that are; the things that seem --
Who shall distinguish shape from show?
The great processional, splendid dream
Of life is all I wish to know.
The gods their faces turn away
From nations and their little wars;
But we our golden drama play
Before the footlights of the stars.
There lives -- though Time should cease to flow,
And stars their courses should forget --
There lives a grey-haired Romeo,
Who loves a golden Juliet.
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 56 sec read
- 70 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | XAXA BCBC DEDE FCFC GBGB HXHX BCBC |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,030 |
Words | 187 |
Stanzas | 7 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
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"Players" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 31 Oct. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/37516/players>.
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