Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). An American Anthology, 1787–1900. 1900.

By John EltonWayland

1460 An Epilogue at Wallack’s

THE PLAY was done;

The mimic lovers of the stage

Were safe united, with their mimic battles won;

But while the prompter closed his well-scored page,

And on his bell a willing finger laid,

An old man, stately, kind, and hale,

In mould of courtly fashion made,

Set forth the moral of the tale.

Much bent with time,

The frost that silvered on his brow

Had left its markings, lined and figured like the rime,

Which on the pane the warming noon-day glow

Has smoothed and softened with its cheery smile.

And while he spoke they lent him willing ears;

For warmest youth of heart the while

Shone through the winter of his years.

’T was not the words,

For they were simple as the tales

Some good old nurse’s well-taxed memory hoards

Against the time when fairy folk-lore fails.

He spoke in well-worn terms of good advice:

How fathers should not draw too ready rein,

Nor sons take umbrage in a trice

At fathers’ counsels,—these and more again.

But as he spoke

The threadbare words they knew so well,

Came rippling streamlets of applause that broke

In throbbing oceans as the curtain fell.

For youth and age, pride, poverty, e’en sin,

Fair maid and bloodless pedagogue,

All felt the world of nearer kin

The while John Gilbert spoke—The Epilogue.