Poems of Pleasure — Refuted

“Anticipation is sweeter than realization.

” It may be, yet I have not found it so.

In those first golden dreams of future fame I did not find such happiness as came When toil was crowned with triumph.

Now I know My words have recognition and will go Straight to some listening heart my early aim To win the idle glory of a name Pales like a candle in the noonday’s glow.

So with the deeper joys of which I dreamed: Life yields more rapture than did childhood’s fancies, And each year brings more pleasure than I waited.

Friendship proves truer than of old it seemed, And, all beyond youth’s passion-hued romances, Love is more perfect than anticipated.