Archibald Lampman - The Cup of Life lyrics

One after one the high emotions fade; Time's wheeling measure empties and refills Year after year; we seek no more the hills That lured our youth divine and unafraid, But swarming on some common highway, made Beaten and smooth, plod onward with blind feet And only where the crowded crossways meet We halt and question, anxious and dismayed. Yet can we not escape it; some we know Have angered and grown mad, some scornfully laughed; Yet surely to each lip--to mine to thin-- Comes with strange scent and pallid poisonous glow The cup of Life, that dull Circean draught, That taints us all, and turns the half to swine.