Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE ODE OF DECLINE, by LEWIS MORRIS (1833-1907) Poet's Biography First Line: With forces well-nigh spent Last Line: And bloom as lilies again beneath the recovered skies. Subject(s): Old Age | ||||||||
WITH forces well-nigh spent, Uneasy or in pain, Or brought to childish weakness once again, With bodies shrunk and bent, We come, if Fate so will, to cold decrepit age. The book of Life lies open at its latest page. Only four score of summers, and four score Of winters, nothing more, And then 'tis done. We have spent our fruitful days beneath the sun; We come to a cold season and a bare, Where little is sweet or fair. We, who a few brief years ago, Would passionately go Across the fields of life to meet the morn, We are content, content and not forlorn, To lie upon our beds, and watch the Day Which kissed the Eastern peaks, grow gradually grey. Great Heaven, that Thou hast made our lives so brief And swiftly spent! We toil our little day and are content, Though Time, the thief, Stands at our side, and smiles his mystic smile. We joy a little, we grieve a little while; We gain some little glimpse of Thy great laws, Rolling in thunder through the voids of space; We gain to look a moment on Thy face, Eternal Source and Cause! And then, the night descending as a cloud, We walk with aspect bowed, And turn to earth and see our Life grow dark. Was it for this the fiery spark Of Thy Eternal Self, sown on the vast And infinite abysses of the Past, Revealed itself and made Creation rise Before Thy Eternal Mind: This little span of life, with purblind eyes That grow completely blind; This little force of brain, Holding dim thoughts sublime, Too weak to withstand the treacheries of Time; This body bent and bowed in twain, Soon racked by growing pain, Which briefer far than is the life of the tree, Springs as a flower and fades, and then must rot And perish and be not, Passing from mystery to mystery? It is a pain To move through the old fields, -- even though they lie Before our eyes, we know that never again, Where once our daily feet were used to pass Amid the crested grass, We any more shall wander till we die; Nor to the old grey church, with the tall spire, Whose vane the sunsets fire, Where once a little child, by kind hands led, Would spell the scant memorials of the dead, -- Never again, or once alone, When pain and Time are done. The soaring thoughts of youth Are dead and cold, the victories of Thought Are no more prized or sought By eyes which draw too near the face of Truth. Whatever fruit or gain Fate held in store To tempt the growing soul or brain, Allures no more. It is as the late Autumn, when the fields Are bare of flower or fruit; Nor charm nor profit the swept surface yields, Sullen and mute; So that a doubting mind might come to hold The very soul and life were dead and cold. But who can peer Into another soul, or tell at all What hidden energies befall The aged lingering here? When all the weary brain Seems dull, the immeasurable fields of life Lie open to the memory, and again They know the youthful joys, the hurry and the strife, And feel, but gentlier now, the ancient pain. In the uneasy vigils of the night, Before the tardy light; Or, lonely days, when no young lives are by, There come such long processions of the dead, The buried lives and hopes of far-off years, Spent joys and dried-up tears, That round them stands a blessed company, Holding high converse, though no word be said, Till only what is past and gone doth seem To live, and all the Present is a dream. So may the wintry earth, Holding her precious seeds within the ground, Pause for the coming birth, When like a clarion-note the Spring shall sound; So may the roots which, buried deep And safe within her sleep, Whisper as 'twere, low down, tales of the sun, -- Whisper of leaf and flower, of bee and bird, -- Till by a sudden glory stirred, A mystic influence bids them rise, Bursting the narrow sheath And cerement of death, And bloom as lilies again beneath the recovered skies. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...AT EIGHTY I CHANGE MY VIEW by DAVID IGNATOW FAWN'S FOSTER-MOTHER by ROBINSON JEFFERS THE DEER LAY DOWN THEIR BONES by ROBINSON JEFFERS OLD BLACK MEN by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON A WINTER ODE TO THE OLD MEN OF LUMMUS PARK, / MIAMI, FLORIDA by DONALD JUSTICE AFTER A LINE BY JOHN PEALE BISHOP by DONALD JUSTICE TO HER BODY, AGAINST TIME by ROBERT KELLY SONG FROM A COUNTRY FAIR by LEONIE ADAMS A CAROL by LEWIS MORRIS (1833-1907) |
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