We'll fill a Provence bowl and pledge us deep
The memory of the far ones, and between
The soothing pipes, in heavy-lidded sleep,
Perhaps we'll dream the things that once have been.
'Tis only noon and still too soon to die,
Yet we are growing old, my heart and I.
A hundred books are ready in my head
To open out where Beauty bent a leaf.
What do we want with Beauty? We are wed
Like ancient Proserpine to dismal grief.
And we are changing with the hours that fly,
And growing odd and old, my heart and I.
Across a bed of bells the river flows,
And roses dawn, but not for us; we want
The new thing ever as the old thing grows
Spectral and weary on the hills we haunt.
Drifts through memory and grief as aging turns beauty spectral, yet still feasts on dreams of what once was
The dust of many roads has been my grey wine.
Surprised beech-trees have bowed
With me, to the plodding morning
Humming tunes frail as webs of dead perfume,
To his love in golden silks, the departed moon.
Maidens like rose-flooded statues
Have bathed me in the wine of their silence.
But now I walk on, alone.
And only after watching many evenings,
Do I dance a bit with dying wisps of moon-light,
To persuade myself that I am young.
Road dust and faded moonlight replace lost loves, and dancing with dying light only half persuades him he's young
To my ninth decade I have tottered on,
And no soft arm bends now my steps to steady;
She, who once led me where she would, is gone,
So when he calls me, Death shall find me ready.
Tottering into his ninth decade, steadying arm gone, he waits unflinching for Death's call
I strove with none, for none was worth my strife;
Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art;
I warmed both hands before the fire of Life;
It sinks, and I am ready to depart.
Warmed both hands at life's fire, loved Nature and Art, and now watches it sink with quiet readiness
BUT lately seen in gladsome green,
The woods rejoic’d the day,
Thro’ gentle showers, the laughing flowers
In double pride were gay:
But now our joys are fled
On winter blasts awa;
Yet maiden May, in rich array,
Again shall bring them a’.
But my white pow, nae kindly thowe
Shall melt the snaws of Age;
My trunk of eild, but buss or beild,
Sinks in Time’s wintry rage.
Oh, Age has weary days,
And nights o’ sleepless pain:
Thou golden time, o’ Youthfu’ prime,
Why comes thou not again!
Nature's spring may return each year, but age's snow never thaws, and the golden time of youth stays gone
When my moustache curled,
And my hair was black,
And I wore tight trousers
And a diamond stud,
I was an excellent knave of hearts and took many a trick.
But when the gray hairs began to appear—
Lo! a new generation of girls
Laughed at me, not fearing me,
And I had no more exciting adventures
Wherein I was all but shot for a heartless devil,
But only drabby affairs, warmed-over affairs
Of other days and other men.
And time went on until I lived at
Mayer’s restaurant,
Partaking of short-orders, a gray, untidy,
Toothless, discarded, rural Don Juan. . . .
The poignant ache of a once-vain seducer whose faded charm and youthful exploits give way to drab loneliness
In youth my wings were strong and tireless,
But I did not know the mountains.
In age I knew the mountains
But my weary wings could not follow my vision—
Genius is wisdom and youth.
The regret of youthful strength misdirected and the sorrow of age knowing too late what life required
How gayly is at first begun
Our Life's uncertain Race!
Whilst yet that sprightly Morning Sun,
With which we just set out to run
Enlightens all the Place.
How smiling the World's Prospect lies
How tempting to go through !
Not Canaan to the Prophet's Eyes,
From Pisgah with a sweet Surprize,
Did more inviting shew.
How promising's the Book of Fate,
Till thoroughly understood!
Whilst partial Hopes such Lots create,
As may the youthful Fancy treat
With all that's Great and Good.
How soft the first Ideas prove,
The journey from morning's gay start to weary toil, then sinking into rest, mirrors life's full arc
Verse, a Breeze 'mid blossoms straying,
Where HOPE clung feeding, like a bee--
Both were mine ! Life went a-maying
With NATURE, HOPE, and POESY,
[Image][Image]When I was young !
When I was young ?--Ah, woful WHEN !
Ah ! for the Change 'twixt Now and Then !
This breathing House not built with hands,
This body that does me grievous wrong,
O'er жry Cliffs and glittering Sands,
How lightly then it flashed along :--
Like those trim skiffs, unknown of yore,
On winding lakes and rivers wide,
That ask no aid of Sail or Oar,
That fear no spite of Wind or Tide !
Nought cared this Body for wind or weather
Bittersweet yearning for lost youth and the painful acknowledgment that age has stolen its light
I shall live to be old, who feared I should die young,
I shall live to be old,
I shall cling to life as the leaves to the creaking oak
In the rustle of falling snow and the cold.
The other trees let loose their leaves on the air
In their russet and red,
I have lived long enough to wonder which is the best,
And to envy sometimes the way of the early dead.
The ambivalence of surviving into old age, clinging to life while envying the early dead
I must have passed the crest a while ago
And now I am going down--
Strange to have crossed the crest and not to know,
But the brambles were always catching the hem of my gown.
All the morning I thought how proud I should be
To stand there straight as a queen,
Wrapped in the wind and the sun with the world under me--
But the air was dull, there was little I could have seen.
It was nearly level along the beaten track
And the brambles caught in my gown--
But it's no use now to think of turning back,
The rest of the way will be only going down.
Realizes the peak of life was passed unnoticed, now only a downhill walk remains
We grow more reconciled to Nature's ways,
And more responsive, with the passing years,
Finding in them a solace for the fears
Engendered by the thought of lessening days;
There comes a sense of comradeship that stays
The lonely questioning heart, and more endears
The deep and changeful beauty that appears
More deep and beautiful with every phase.
The brooding tenderness of earth and sky
Becomes more palpable and to our need,
As if some friendly consciousness were nigh —
Some mother element but dimly guessed,
That, gathering nearer, gently sought to lead
Weary and wandering children back to rest.
Finds peace in nature's maternal embrace as aging eases fears of mortality
Though leaves are many, the root is one;
Through all the lying days of my youth
I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun;
Now I may wither into the truth.
Youth's illusions fade into the single root of truth: aging brings clarity through loss
Here in the shade of the tree
The hours go by
Silent and swift,
Lightly as birds fly.
Then the deep clouds broaden and drift,
Or the cloudless darkness and the worn moon.
Waking, the dreamer knows he is old,
And the day that he dreamed was gone
Is gone.
Waking to find youth's dreamed day gone, only the worn moon of age remains
I bought every kind of machine that’s known—
Grinders, shellers, planters, mowers,
Mills and rakes and ploughs and threshers—
And all of them stood in the rain and sun,
Getting rusted, warped and battered,
For I had no sheds to store them in,
And no use for most of them.
And toward the last, when I thought it over,
There by my window, growing clearer
About myself, as my pulse slowed down,
And looked at one of the mills I bought—
Which I didn’t have the slightest need of,
As things turned out, and I never ran—
A fine machine, once brightly varnished,
And eager to do its work,
Now with its paint washed off—
Sees a life as a fine machine rusted unused, a regretted missed purpose
In me is a little painted square
Bordered by old shops, with gaudy awnings.
And before the shops sit smoking, open-bloused old men,
Drinking sunlight.
The old men are my thoughts:
And I come to them each evening, in a creaking cart,
And quietly unload supplies.
We fill slim pipes and chat,
And inhale scents from pale flowers in the center of the square....
Strong men, tinkling women, and dripping, squealing children
Stroll past us, or into the shops.
They greet the shopkeepers, and touch their hats or foreheads to me....
Some evening I shall not return to my people.
Aging as a quiet retreat into your own thoughts, watching life pass by from a peaceful distance
I am worn out with dreams;
A weather-worn, marble triton
Among the streams;
And all day long I look
Upon this lady's beauty
As though I had found in book
A pictured beauty,
Pleased to have filled the eyes
Or the discerning ears,
Delighted to be but wise,
For men improve with the years;
And yet and yet
Is this my dream, or the truth?
O would that we had met
When I had my burning youth;
But I grow old among dreams,
Feeling weathered by years and wondering what might have been if you had met life with burning youth
THERE was a time when this poor frame was whole
And I had youth and never another care,
Or none that should have troubled a strong soul.
Yet, except sometimes in a frosty air
When my heels hammered out a melody
From pavements of a city left behind,
I never would acknowledge my own glee
Because it was less mighty than my mind
Had dreamed of. Since I could not boast of strength
Great as I wished, weakness was all my boast.
I sought yet hated pity till at length
I earned it. Oh, too heavy was the cost.
But now that there is something I could use
My youth and strength for, I deny the age,
The care and weakness that I know--refuse
To admit I am unworthy of the wage
Regretting squandered youth and the self-deceptions that kept you from living fully
I thought no more was needed
Youth to prolong
Than dumb-bell and foil
To keep the body young.
Oh, who could have foretold
That the heart grows old?
Though I have many words,
What woman's satisfied,
I am no longer faint
Because at her side?
Oh, who could have foretold
That the heart grows old?
I have not lost desire
But the heart that I had,
I thought 'twould burn my body
Laid on the death-bed.
The shock of discovering that even if you stay fit, your heart ages and passion fades
I am the river, I have been immense
With hope, great as the inner heart of spring-
The reeds have huddled to my whimpering
Amid the noon-time's staleness and suspense.
Between the ruins of magnificence.
Stained and autumnal, mournfully I sing,
And then among my white beards muttering
Grow old, and sleep into indifference.
I have no returning, onward is best.
Close to the dark, sweet earth in every place.
But with the sky's mark hidden in my breast.
And a star's shadow falling on my face.
Where shining spaces wait to fill with me,
Death is the beautiful and bitter sea.
Life as a river flowing from hopeful spring through autumnal decay toward an inevitable, bittersweet sea
Sad is old Ben Thistlewaite,
Now his day is done,
And all his children
Far away are gone.
He sits beneath his jasmined porch,
His stick between his knees,
His eyes fixed vacant
On his moss-grown trees.
Grass springs in the green path,
His flowers are lean and dry,
His thatch hangs in wisps against
The evening sky.
He has no heart to care now,
Though the winds will blow
Whistling in his casement,
And the rain drip thro'.
Old age as an empty garden, grief for the departed, and the fading light of remembered love
Silver-green lanterns tossing among windy branches :
So an old man thinks
Of the loves of his youth.
Old age distills youthful loves into a glowing, wind-tossed memory
I'll say and maybe dream I have drawn content--
Seeing that time has frozen up the blood,
The wick of youth being burned and the oil spent--
From beauty that is cast out of a mould
In bronze, or that in dazzling marble appears,
Appears, and when we have gone is gone again,
Being more indifferent to our solitude
Than 'twere an apparition. O heart, we are old,
The living beauty is for younger men,
We cannot pay its tribute of wild tears.
Aging recognizes that living beauty and wild tears now belong to the young
" I KNEW a real man once," says Agatha in the splendor
of a shagbark hickory tree.
Did a man touch his lips to Agatha? Did a man hold
her in his arms? Did a man only look at her
and pass by?
Agatha, far past forty in a splendor of remembrance,
says, " I knew a real man once."
Past forty, memory replays a real man and the life unlived with him
“To meet and then to part,” and that is all,
To slowly turn an album’s crusty leaves,
To see the faces and the scenes recall,
Are things that in a lifetime one achieves.
To wander down a broad-arch gallery,
Viewing the scenes from life on either side,
Pressed forward with the force of years to see
But part of every picture when espied.
The big sun in its blue dome keeps its course,
Without a falter moves upon its way.
So human life, returning to its source,
Is overtaken by the close of day.
To dream, and being rudely waked from thought,
Return to peaceful dreaming dearly bought.
Life's close is a peaceful turning of memory's album before day ends
A little Snow was here and there
Disseminated in her Hair --
Since she and I had met and played
Decade had gathered to Decade --
But Time had added not obtained
Impregnable the Rose
For summer too indelible
Too obdurate for Snows --
Winter in the hair still holds an indelible summer rose inside
The harbingers are come. See, see their mark;
White is their colour, and behold my head.
But must they have my brain? must they dispark
Those sparkling notions, which therein were bred?
Must dulnesse turn me to a clod?
Yet have they left me, Thou art still my God.
Good men ye be, to leave me my best room,
Ev'n all my heart, and what is lodged there:
I passe not, I, what of the rest become,
So Thou art still my God, be out of fear.
He will be pleased with that dittie;
And if I please him, I write fine and wittie.
Farewell sweet phrases, lovely metaphors.
But will ye leave me thus? when ye before
Of stews and brothels onely knew the doores,
Then did I wash you with my tears, and more,
Aging whitens the head but leaves the heart's true devotion intact
It will not hurt me when I am old,
A running tide where moonlight burned
Will not sting me like silver snakes;
The years will make me sad and cold,
It is the happy heart that breaks.
The heart asks more than life can give,
When that is learned, then all is learned;
The waves break fold on jewelled fold,
But beauty itself is fugitive,
It will not hurt me when I am old.
Old age brings a weary calm where beauty and heartbreak lose their sting
Behind their veils of clinging mist,
Elusive as a dream,
In changing rose and amethyst
The mountains stood supreme.
Consumed as by some inward fire
Of brooding mystery,
They held the heart of his desire —
His love and poetry.
And always, ever, some dear time —
So ran his hidden hopes —
He meant to leave his task and climb
Their beckoning emerald slopes,
To scale their precipices bold,
And watch the rose-wreaths rise,
To see the gates of Heaven unrolled
Before his longing eyes.
Duty-filled years pass while the dreamt-of mountains remain unclimbed at last
The hills are wroth; the stones have scored you bitterly
Because you looked upon the naked sun
Oblivious of them, because you did not see
The trees you touched or mountains that you walked upon.
But there will come a day of darkness in the land,
A day wherein remembered sun alone comes through
To mark the hills; then perhaps you’ll understand
Just how it was you drew from them and they from you.
For there will be a bent old woman in that day
Who, feeling something of this country in her bones,
Will leave her house tapping with a stick, who will (they say)
Come back to seek the girl she was in these familiar stones.
In old age one returns to the native hills to find the girl once left behind
And I was once like this! that glowing cheek
Was mine, those pleasure-sparkling eyes, that brow
Smooth as the level lake, when not a breeze
Dies o'er the sleeping surface! twenty years
Have wrought strange alteration! Of the friends
Who once so dearly prized this miniature,
And loved it for its likeness, some are gone
To their last home; and some, estranged in heart,
Beholding me with quick-averted glance
Pass on the other side! But still these hues
Remain unalter'd, and these features wear
The look of Infancy and Innocence.
I search myself in vain, and find no trace
Of what I was: those lightly-arching lines
Dark and o'erhanging now; and that mild face
Settled in these strong lineaments!--There were
A two-year-old's portrait becomes a measure of how much time has changed the poet, a mirror for looking back on a life
There is the caw of a crow,
And the hesitant song of a thrush.
There is the tinkle of a cowbell far away,
And the voice of a plowman on Shipley’s hill.
The forest beyond the orchard is still
With midsummer stillness;
And along the road a wagon chuckles,
Loaded with corn, going to Atterbury.
And an old man sits under a tree asleep,
And an old woman crosses the road,
Coming from the orchard with a bucket of blackberries.
And a boy lies in the grass
Near the feet of the old man,
And looks up at the sailing clouds,
And longs, and longs, and longs
For what, he knows not:
From boyhood yearning for the unknown to old age yearning for the lost past, the same longing circles back worn out
When I was young my heart was old,
My heart was rich and very wise :
Now all its wisdom has been told
And all its wealth is fairy gold
And all its joy futilities.
My heart would say, when I was young,
"It would be well to grieve no more.
The griefs you sing had all been sung
Before you learned your mother-tongue,
And all your tears been shed before."
When I was young my heart would say:
"What childish things are these you seek?
The piper's price is large to pay
And there will come a reckoning day!"
In this wise way my heart would speak.
But now it cries continually.
The irony that an old soul in youth became reckless in age, trading wisdom for a final hunger for happiness
The more we live, more brief appear
Our life's succeeding stages;
A day to childhood seems a year,
And years like passing ages.
The gladsome current of our youth,
Ere passion yet disorders,
Steals lingering like a river smooth
Along its grassy borders.
But as the careworn cheek grows wan,
And sorrow's shafts fly thicker,
Ye stars, that measure life to man,
Why seem your courses quicker?
When joys have lost their bloom and breath,
And life itself is vapid,
Why, as we reach the Falls of Death
Feel we its tide more rapid?
The river of life runs faster as we age, yet that very speed is a mercy when friends have gone
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!
Youth's sure romance becomes age's numb realization that it died long before it ever arrived
When, in the gold October dusk, I saw you near to setting,
Arcturus, bringer of spring,
Lord of the summer nights, leaving us now in autumn,
Having no pity on our withering;
Oh then I knew at last that my own autumn was upon me,
I felt it in my blood,
Restless as dwindling streams that still remember
The music of their flood.
There in the thickening dark a wind-bent tree above me
Loosed its last leaves in flight--
I saw you sink and vanish, pitiless Arcturus,
You will not stay to share our lengthening night.
Watching Arcturus set, the speaker feels her own autumn arrive, a stark realization of aging and the approaching night
I have loved hours at sea, gray cities,
The fragile secret of a flower,
Music, the making of a poem
That gave me heaven for an hour;
First stars above a snowy hill,
Voices of people kindly and wise,
And the great look of love, long hidden,
Found at last in meeting eyes.
I have loved much and been loved deeply--
Oh when my spirit's fire burns low,
Leave me the darkness and the stillness,
I shall be tired and glad to go.
A grateful reckoning with a life rich in love and beauty, accepting death as a weary, contented rest
Back and forth, back and forth, to and from the church,
With my Bible under my arm
’Till I was gray and old;
Unwedded, alone in the world,
Finding brothers and sisters in the congregation,
And children in the church.
I know they laughed and thought me queer.
I knew of the eagle souls that flew high in the sunlight,
Above the spire of the church, and laughed at the church,
Disdaining me, not seeing me.
But if the high air was sweet to them, sweet was the church to me.
It was the vision, vision, vision of the poets
Democratized!
An old woman looks back and finds that a lifetime's quiet devotion to church gave her belonging and sacred vision
Say, is it dim and grim and all full of fear?
Not at all, not at all, my pretty dear.
Will there be no hope? Nothing to desire?
You shall be comforted sitting by the fire.
Will no one look at me? love me, if I please?
You shall doze happy with a little bread and cheese.
Even the springing grass--will it look pale?
You shall be gladdened with a little warm ale.
Shall I be trembling and querulous of tongue?
You shall be wiser than anybody young.
When the first thrushes sing, shall I not hear?
Not at all, not at all, my pretty dear.
Age answers youth's fears of growing old, promising not despair but fireside comfort, wisdom, and simple pleasures
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 ...
The mirror reflects a face worn by time, but the deeper ruin is regret, a bitterness youth never knew