Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, LUCIE, by ISABEL STEWART MCMEEKIN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

LUCIE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Your eighty gallant years were not enough
Last Line: This brevity of eighty vivid years.
Subject(s): Old Age; Women


Your eighty gallant years were not enough
To show the caliber, the home-spun stuff
That went into your fabric. Tensile strength,
Exquisite pattern and the length
Of that repeated, smooth design,
That still-symbolic stated line.
Heredity plus that small stream,
Meandering, thus, a weaver's dream;
The substance of a wayward heart,
A secret thing, a thing apart,
Held tight beneath a basque, a bonnet,
As seeming-set a thing as is a sonnet,
Yet with that fault that breaks the thread, the rhyme
And quickens it to fresher pattern, livelier time;
A hasty humour, an impulsive speech,
Forgetting texts the clergy preach ...
Life took you with an eager hand,
You loved this sea, this wind-swept land,
This brilliant sun, this drenching shower,
This week, this day, this very hour.

The world was surely lighter that you came
And answered all these years to you bright name,
Too short a time for laughter and for tears,
This brevity of eighty vivid years.





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