I – though heart might find relief Did I become a Christian man and choose for my belief What seems most welcome in the tomb – play a predestined part. Homer is my example and his unchristened heart.
Sweetheart, do not love too long: I loved long and long, And grew to be out of fashion Like an old song.
Earth in beauty dressed Awaits returning spring. All true love must die, Alter at the best Into some lesser thing. Prove that I lie.
Why should I seek for love or study it? It is of God and passes human wit; I study hatred with great diligence, For that’s a passion in my own control, A sort of besom that can clear the soul Of everything that is not mind or sense.
I can forgive even that wrong of wrongs, Those undreamt accidents that have made me Seeing that Fame has perished this long while, Being but a part of ancient ceremony Notorious, till all my priceless things Are but a post the passing dogs defile.
Bodily decrepitude is wisdom; young We loved each other and were ignorant.
Because of something told under the famished horn Of the hunter’s moon, that hung between the night and the day, To dream of women whose beauty was folded in dismay, Even in an old story, is a burden not to be borne.
For wisdom is the property of the dead, A something incompatible with life; and power, Like everything that has the stain of blood, A property of the living; but no stain Can come upon the visage of the moon When it has looked in glory from a cloud.
The hare grows old as she plays in the sun And gazes around her with eyes of brightness; Before the swift things that she dreamed of were done She limps along in an aged whiteness...
I rise in the dawn, and I kneel and blow Till the seed of the fire flicker and glow; And then I must scrub and bake and sweep Till the stars are beginning to blink and peep; And the young lie long and dream in their bed...
O heart, we are old; The living beauty is for younger men: We cannot pay its tribute of wild tears.
When a man grows old his joy Grows more deep day after day, His empty heart is full at length But he has need of all that strength Because of the increasing Night That opens her mystery and fright.
Nor bird nor beast Could make me wish for anything this day, Being old, but that the old alone might die, And that would be against God’s Providence.
I have nothing but the embittered sun; Banished heroic mother moon and vanished, And now that I have come to fifty years I must endure the timid sun.
I thought no more was needed Youth to prolong Than dumb-bell and foil To keep the body young. O 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? O who could have foretold That the heart grows old?
And wisdom is a butterfly And not a gloomy bird of prey...
Those men that in their writings are most wise Own nothing but their blind, stupefied hearts.
But O, sick children of the world, Of all the many changing things In dreary dancing past us whirled, To the cracked tune that Chronos sings, Words alone are certain good.
I have mummy truths to tell Whereat the living mock, Though not for sober ear, For maybe all that hear Should laugh and weep an hour upon the clock.