Song of the wave / George Cabot Lodge [electronic text]

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!— 'Tis 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 doneAnd lived and suffered and loved Come back as we sit alone In the old years, sure and proved, And give us the crown we won.

And say, "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.