Cosmograf When Age Has Done Its Duty
Growing Old
What is it to grow old?
Is it to lose the glory of the form
The lustre of the eye?
Is it for beauty to forego her wreath?
Yes, but not for this alone
Is it to feel our strength -
Not our bloom only, but our strength -decay?
Is it to feel each limb
Grow stiffer, every function less exact
Each nerve more weakly strung?
Yes, this, and more! but not
Ah, 'tis not what in youth we dreamed 'twould be!
'Tis not to have our life
Mellowed and softened as with sunset-glow
A golden day's decline!
'Tis not to see the world
As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes
And heart profoundly stirred
And weep, and feel the fulness of the past
The years that are no more!
It is to spend long days
And not once feel that we were ever young
It is to add, immured
In the hot prison of the present, month
To month with weary pain
It is to suffer this
And feel but half, and feebly, what we feel:
Deep in our hidden heart
Festers the dull remembrance of a change
But no emotion - none
It is - last stage of all -
When we are frozen up within, and quite
The phantom of ourselves
To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost
Which blamed the living man
The Music
The energy of youth is wasted on the young
That's what they say
When the party music stops we start to age
Our faces rearranged by fear and pain
We lose what we hold dear
Our bodies crumbled more the longer we stay
A boy in a landscape, with a happy heart
Fun and games of life to play, and I played my part
Oblivious to adult worries, depressing thoughts
And life was best in the good old days, or so I thought
Boy in a landscape, with our forgotten hearts
The time had come for it to end
All good things would start to bend
The final act in rural entertainment, was played
Pried from her home in a poor state of health
The time had come to face her death
Hold on tight for all shes worth, it felt such a short time since her birth
The ferry awaits
He waits by the bed
For his mistress to wake
She fights 'til the end
Rejecting her friends
And she won't wake
When age has done it's duty, what remains is memory
Etched in glass on me
Hello?
Growing old is only a number
I'm 78 next birthday
It's only a number
Get it out of your head
Think young
Think yourself young
Go out into the world and conquer it
And believe
Believe in yourself