POEMS
Men who have longer, fuller lives to live,
Who are not stopped and broken in their prime,
With their faces still to summer, Men do not know
What Age says to a woman. They would not wait
To feel slip from their hands without a throe,
Without a struggle, futile and desperate,
All that has given them wealth and love and power
Doomed, without hope or rumour of reprieve.
They would not smile into the eyes of that advancing hour
Who had bent all summer to their bow, and had flung
The widest rose and kissed the keenest mouth
And slept in the lordliest bed when they were young.
That bitter twilight which sun-worshipping Youth
Flies headlong keeps Age loitering on the hill,
Uneager to fold such greyness to his breast,
Knowing that none will thwart him of his will,
None be before him on that quest.
Who are not stopped and broken in their prime,
With their faces still to summer, Men do not know
What Age says to a woman. They would not wait
To feel slip from their hands without a throe,
Without a struggle, futile and desperate,
All that has given them wealth and love and power
Doomed, without hope or rumour of reprieve.
They would not smile into the eyes of that advancing hour
Who had bent all summer to their bow, and had flung
The widest rose and kissed the keenest mouth
And slept in the lordliest bed when they were young.
That bitter twilight which sun-worshipping Youth
Flies headlong keeps Age loitering on the hill,
Uneager to fold such greyness to his breast,
Knowing that none will thwart him of his will,
None be before him on that quest.
I am growing old.
I was not always kind when I was young
To women who were old, for Youth is blind—
A small, green, bitter thing beneath its fragrant rind,
And fanged against the old with boisterous tongue—
I was not always kind when I was young
To women who were old, for Youth is blind—
A small, green, bitter thing beneath its fragrant rind,
And fanged against the old with boisterous tongue—
13
