WHEN you are old, and I am old,
And Passion’s fires are burned to embers,
And Life is as a tale that’s told,
And only worth what Love remembers,
If we should meet — two quiet folk —
And change opinions of the weather,
Could word or look again provoke
The heart and eyes to speak together —
The heart benumbed witli so much ache,
The eyes bedimmed with so much crying?
Do buds long blighted ever break,
And green the vine already dying ?
What hand of skill shall draw the line
’Twixt sordid love and holier passion ?
What art, shall fix the unfailing sign,
And bring its reading into fashion?
What is the meaning of it all,
The chastening woe, the vanished sweetness,
If dark Oblivion’s night shall fall
Forever on its incompleteness?
When you are dead, and I am dead,
Our faces lost, our names unspoken,
Shall then the mystery he read ?
Can Heaven bind what Earth has broken ?
In clearer light and fairer day,
With finer sense the impulse proving,
Unfettered of this hindering clay,
Oh, what must be the joy of loving!
Eliot C. True.