magiadoreal

What is it to grow old? Is it to lose the glory of the form, The lustre of the eye? Is it for beauty to forego her wreath? Yes, but not for this alone. Is it to feel our strength— Not our bloom only, but our strength—decay? Is it to feel each limb Grow stiffer, every function less exact, Each nerve more weakly strung? Yes, this, and more! but not, Ah, 'tis not what in youth we dreamed 'twould be! 'Tis not to have our life Mellowed and softened as with sunset-glow, A golden day's decline! 'Tis not to see the world As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes, And heart profoundly stirred; And weep, and feel the fulness of the past, The years that are no more! It is to spend long days And not once feel that we were ever young. It is to add, immured In the hot prison of the present, month To month with weary pain. It is to suffer this, And feel but half, and feebly, what we feel: Deep in our hidden heart Festers the dull remembrance of a change, But no emot

IN THIS fair stranger’s eyes of grey Thine eyes, my love, I see. I shudder: for the passing day Had borne me far from thee. This is the curse of life: that not A nobler calmer train Of wiser thoughts and feelings blot Our passions from our brain; But each day brings its petty dust Our soon-chok’d souls to fill, And we forget because we must, And not because we will. I struggle towards the light; and ye, Once-long’d-for storms of love! If with the light ye cannot be, I bear that ye remove. I struggle towards the light; but oh, While yet the night is chill, Upon Time’s barren, stormy flow, Stay with me, Marguerite, still!