I said, "My youth is gone
Like a fire beaten out by the rain,
That will never sway and sing
Or play with the wind again."
I said, "It is no great sorrow
That quenched my youth in me,
But only little sorrows
Beating ceaselessly."
I thought my youth was gone,
But you returned--
Like a flame at the call of the wind
It leaped and burned;
Threw off its ashen cloak,
And gowned anew
Gave itself like a bride
Once more to you.
When I have ceased to break my wings
Against the faultiness of things,
And learned that compromises wait
Behind each hardly opened gate,
When I can look Life in the eyes,
Grown calm and very coldly wise,
Life will have given me the Truth,
And taken in exchange--my youth.
Remember me as I was then;
Turn from me now, but always see
The laughing shadowy girl who stood
At midnight by the flowering tree,
With eyes that love had made as bright
As the trembling stars of the summer night.
Turn from me now, but always hear
The muted laughter in the dew
Of that one year of youth we had,
The only youth we ever knew--
Turn from me now, or you will see
What other years have done to me.
When I was young, my hopes ran high —
My hopes did run, and so could I;
They danced upon the mountain tops
Oblivious of the traffic cops ;
They swung, like monkeys in the trees,
From sun and moon and Pleiades ;
They frolicked on the farthest wave
And thumbed their noses at the grave;
They thumbed their haughty bugles long
At men and creeds and right and wrong,
And gave the tin-horn days to come
Their only sound of fife and drum: —
Well, now my thyroid youth is done,
I'm very glad my hopes had fun!
The ruins of your face were twined with youth.
Vines of starlight questioned your face when you smiled.
Your eyes dissolved over distances
And steeped the graves of many loves.
Night was kind to your body:
The careless vehemence of curves
Softened beneath your darkly-loosened dress.
And your heart toyed with an emotion
That left you vague hunger poised over death.
On city pavements
Two muffled, sombre nuns pace,
Behind laughing girls.
The old men of the world have made a fire
To warm their trembling hands.
They poke the young men in.
The young men burn like withes.
If one run a little way,
The old men are wrath.
They catch him and bind him and throw him again to the flames.
Green withes burn slow...
And the smoke of the young men's torment
Rises round and sheer as the trunk of a pillared oak,
And the darkness thereof spreads over the sky....
Green withes burn slow...
And the old men of the world sit round the fire
And rub their hands....
But the smoke of the young men's torment
Ascends up for ever and ever.
Let all the towns remember you.
And tell it out with mellow tongue,
Down April yards at fall of dew —
That you were fair, that you were young.
A wind at dusk shaken to and fro
Against a melon-colored pane;
White flags in a brief, wistful row;
An only star after a rain.
But let this secret keep unsung;
Nor wise nor fool must it divine,
And tell it out with April tongue —
That all this loveliness was mine !
Your face has lost
The clearness it once wore,
And your brow smooth and white
Its look of light;
Your eyes that were
So careless, are how deep with care!
O, what has done
This cruelty to you?
Is it only Time makes strange
Your look with change,
Or something more
Than the worst pang Time ever bore?--
Regret, regret!
So bitter that it changes
Bright youth to madness,
Poisoning mere sadness ...
When first Love came, then was I but a boy
Swept with delirium of undreamt joy.
Now Love comes to a man serious with change
Of life and death--and makes the world dark and strange.
The dew is on the grasses, dear,
The blush is on the rose.
And swift across our dial-youth,
A shifting shadow goes.
The primrose moments, lush with bliss,
Exhale and fade away,
Life may renew the Autumn time,
But nevermore the May!
When I was young
I used to say:
Romance will come riding by
And I shall surely smile
And play with him awhile.
When I grew older
then I said:
Romance may come riding by
I wonder shall I smile
And play with him awhile?
But now—
Alas! I only say:
Romance ever will come by
And I shall never smile
He has been dead the while!