George Santayana (1863–1952)

OUR youth is like a rustic at the play

That cries aloud in simple-hearted fear,

Curses the villain, shudders at the fray,

And weeps before the maiden’s wreathèd bier.

Yet once familiar with the changing show,

He starts no longer at a brandished knife;

But, his heart chasten’d at the sight of woe,

Ponders the mirror’d sorrows of his life.

So tutor’d too, I watch the moving art

Of all this magic and impassion’d pain

That tells the story of the human heart

In a false instance, such as poets feign.

I smile, and keep within the parchment furl’d

That prompts the passions of this strutting world.