Poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

At Forty-Eight

At twilight, vis-a-vis with fate,
  She sat, unhappy and alone,
Her milestones numbered forty-eight,
  No other pathway crossed her own.

No tender voice robbed age of gloom,
  No smiling faces cheered her sight.
There only glided through the room
  The phantom of a dead delight.

"How dim and drear the pathway seems,"
  She said, "to me at forty-eight;
Long since I wakened from my dreams--
  I seek for naught, for nothing wait.

"I am like one who blindly gropes
  Toward fading sunsets in the west;
Behind me lie youth's shattered hopes:
  What can I ask for now but rest?

"Some joys I sought with heart on fire
  Would find me now, but all too late--
I watched ambition's funeral pyre
  Burn down ere I was forty-eight.

"With naught to hope, expect or win;
  This lonely lot remains to me,
To count the wrecks of what 'Has been'
  And know that nothing more can be."

Too sad to weep, to tired to pray;
  Alone she sat at forty-eight,
While sunset colors paled to gray--
  How desolate, how desolate! 

1. The Birth of the Orchid
2. The Call (All wantonly in hours of joy)
3. Be Not Attached
4. Behold the Earth
5. The Black Charger

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