To Get the Final Lilt of Songs

  To get the final lilt of songs,
  To penetrate the inmost lore of poets--to know the mighty ones,
  Job, Homer, Eschylus, Dante, Shakespere, Tennyson, Emerson;
  To diagnose the shifting-delicate tints of love and pride and doubt--
      to truly understand,
  To encompass these, the last keen faculty and entrance-price,
  Old age, and what it brings from all its past experiences.