NEVER TOO LATE.

New Zealand Tablet, 14 April 1921, Page 35

NEVER TOO LATE.

It is too late? Nay, nothing is too late Till the tired heart shall cease to palpitate. "V Cato learned Greek at eighty Sophocles Wrote his grand Oedipus and Simonides Bore off the prize of verse from his compeers When each had numbered more than four score years* And Theophrastus at four-score and ten Had but begun his Characters of Men. 4 Chaucer, at Woodstock, with the nightingales, At sixty wrote the Canterbury Tales. Goethe, at Weimar, toiling to the last, Completed Faust when eighty years were past. X] What, then! Shall we sit idly down and say The night hath come; it is no longer day ? J The night hath not yet come. We are not quite *>/ Cut off from labor by the falling light; y* Something remains for us,to do and dare; Even- the oldest tree some fruit may bear? • *u For age is opportunity no less ’ *: Than youth itself, though in ■ another dress; %'i -X-*: And as the evening twilight fades away The sky is filled with stars invisible by day. |‘, —H. W. Longfellow.