"A Parable"

A Parable

The Night goes down as a new Day comes up,

        The face of each lies at the mountain rim,
The whole wide beryl world apart; the one
        Is flushed and proud—the other wan and dim.

So Old Age sinks to Life’s low horizon,
        While in the east with eager, beating heart,
Fair Youth comes boldly up. . . . They look across,
        Each at the other—a whole life apart!

"A Parable" as it appears in Ella Higginson's The Voice of April-Land and Other Poems (1903).