What was to be the value of the long looked forward to,<br />Long hoped for calm, the autumnal serenity<br />And the wisdom of age? Had they deceived us<br />Or deceived themselves, the quiet-voiced elders,<br />Bequeathing us merely a receipt for deceit?<br />The serenity only a deliberate hebetude,<br />The wisdom only the knowledge of dead secrets<br />Useless in the darkness into which they peered<br />Or from which they turned their eyes. There is, it seems to us,<br />At best, only a limited value<br />In the knowledge derived from experience.<br />The knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies,<br />For the pattern is new in every moment<br />And every moment is a new and shocking<br />Valuation of all we have been. We are only undeceived<br />Of that which, deceiving, could no longer harm.