Let Me Grow Lovely

Joan Miro  Nude with Mirror

Let Me Grow Lovely

Let me grow lovely, growing old--
So many fine things do:
Laces, and ivory, and gold,
And silks need not be new;
And there is healing in old trees,
Old streets a glamour hold;
Why may not I, as well as these,
Grow lovely, growing old?

~ Karle Wilson Baker ~

When We Last Parted

Alfredo Castañeda

Our Years

When We Last Parted

When we last parted, thou wert young and fair,

How beautiful let fond rememberance say!

Alas! since then old time has stolen away

Full thirty years, leaving my temples bare.-

So has it perished like a thing of air,

The dream of love and youth!-now both are grey

Yet still remembering that delightful day,

Though time with his cold touch has blanched my hair,

Though I may have suffered many years of pain

Since then, though I did never think to live

To hear that voice or see those eyes again,

I can sad but cordial greeting give,

And for thy welfare breathe a warm prayer-

As when I loved thee young and fair.

~ Catherine Maria Fanshawe ~

Of Beauty

Lovis Corinth

Old Man in Armor

Of Beauty

Let us use it while we may

Snatch those joys that haste away!

Earth her winter coat may cast,

And renew her beauty past:

But, our winter come, in vain

We solicit spring again;

And when our furrows snow shall cover,

Love may return but never lover.

~ Sir Richard Fanshawe ~

Oh, No-Not Ev'n When First We Lov'd

Arnold Böcklin
Boy and Girl Picking Flowers

Peder Serverin Kroyer
Wedding Portrait

Charles Angrand

Couple in the Street

Oh, No-Not Ev'n When First We Lov'd

Oh, no-not ev'n when first we lov'd

Wert thou as dear as now thou art;

Thy beauty then my senses mov'd,

But now my virtues bind my heart,

What was but Passion's sigh before

Has since been turn'd to Reason's vow;

And, though I then might love thee more,

Trust me, I love thee better now.

Although my heart in earlier youth

Might kindle with more wild desire,

Believe me, it has gain'd in truth

Much more than it has lost in fire.

The flame now warms my inmost core

That then but sparkled o'er my brow,

And though I seem'd to love thee more,

Yet, oh, I love thee better now.

~ Thomas Moore ~

Aftermath

Lovis Corinth

Autumn Flowers

Aftermath

When the summer fields are mown,

When the birds are fledged and flown,

And the dry leaves strew the path;

With the falling of the snow,

With the cawing of the crow,

Once again the fields we mow

And gather in the aftermath.

Not the sweet, new grass with flowers

Is this harvesting of ours;

Not the upland clover bloom;

But the rowen mixed with weeds,

Tangled tufts from marsh and meads,

Where the poppy drops its seeds

In the silence and the gloom.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ~

As I Grow Older

Beauford Delaney

Can Fire in the Park

As I Grow Older

It was a long time ago.

I have almost forgotten my dream.

But it was there then,

In front of me,

Bright like a sun--

My dream.

And then the wall rose,

Rose slowly,

Slowly,

Between me and my dream.

Rose until it touched the sky--

The wall.

Shadow.

I am black.

I lie down in the shadow.

No longer the light of my dream before me,

Above me.

Only the thick wall.

Only the shadow.

My hands!

My dark hands!

Break through the wall!

Find my dream!

Help me to shatter this darkness,

To smash this night,

To break this shadow

Into a thousand lights of sun,

Into a thousand whirling dreams

Of sun!

~ Langston Hughes ~

Forgetfulness

Lovis Corinth

Grandmother and Granddaughter

Forgetfulness

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

~ Billy Collins ~

I Sit and Think

Jared French

Seated Man

I Sit and Think

I sit beside the fire and think
of all that I have seen,
of meadow-flowers and butterflies
in summers that have been;

Of yellow leaves and gossamer
in autumns that there were,
with morning mist and silver sun
and wind upon my hair.

I sit beside the fire and think
of how the world will be
when winter comes without a spring
that I shall never see.

For still there are so many things
that I have never seen:
in every wood in every spring
there is a different green.

I sit beside the fire and think
of people long ago,
and people who will see a world
that I shall never know.

But all the while I sit and think
of times there were before,
I listen for returning feet
and voices at the door.

~ J. R. R. Tolkien ~