Analysis of Refuted

‘Anticipation is sweeter than realisation.’

It may be, yet I have not found it so.
  In those first golden dreams of future fame
  I did not find such happiness as came
When toil was crowned with triumph. Now I know
My words have recognition, and will go
  Straight to some listening heart, my early aim,
  To win the idle glory of a name,
Pales like a candle in the noonday’s glow.

So with the deeper joys of which I dreamed:
  Life yields more rapture than did childhood’s fancies,
  And each year brings more pleasure than I waited.
Friendship proves truer than of old it seemed,
  And, all beyond youth’s passion-hued romances,
  Love is more perfect than anticipated.