Poems and dramas of George Cabot Lodge :: :: University of Virginia Library

LOVE IN AGE

It was never more than a face,
An impression merely; a bit
Of failing landscape—her grace
Just caught as the rain-cloud split
And the air grew warm a space.

And now it is many years,
And I, with my thin hair gray,
Face wrinkled—perhaps by tears!—
'T is strange how my yesterday
Of dead youth reappears.

I wonder if after all
I've any right to complain!
As the shadows weave on the wall,
And we feel the wash of rain
Through the light grown thin and small;

As we sit and cherish the hearth,
While the dead come one by one
And mime their long-quenched mirth,
I feel I have grown alone
And cold on a living earth.

Well, one of the dear mute things
That climb up out of the dark
Is this face, this moment that clings
To life and me, like a spark
That all the dead sunlight flings.

Just rain-starred, blowing grass,
The scent of the fluent air,
Her profile—eyes like glass
That kept a jewel, hair
All mystery—I thought to pass

And she turned—one look to me
Carelessly, then away
Out over the flat gray sea
Where the white squall fled away
And the light broke scatteredly.

And then I knew that her face
Was all in my blood; half-blind,
I paused, eyes closed, a space—
And after?—naught but wind
And the clouds blown fine as lace.

And there—the story's told;
And hardly worth, you'll say—
Perhaps to yourself: “He's old
And wanders”—yet far away

I know that the days were gold
As the past says, “I shall repay.”

And the memory, three parts grief,
Is exquisite and real
With a joy unlived; but chief,
As the warm drops heartward steal,
With a present strange belief

That all we have been and done
And lived and suffered and loved
Comes back as we sit alone
In the old years, sure and proved,
And gives us the crown we won.

And says, “The living was worth;
The little laugh, much tears,
The fight ye fought on earth,
All come in the latter years
More real in a richer birth.”

Ah! there's the old, old pain—
I stand in the sultry air
And think I see again,
Dimly, her wind-blown hair
Through the drift of seaward rain.