Somehow the skies don’t seem so blue
As they used to be;
Blossoms have a fainter hue,
Grass less green I see.
There’s no twinkle in a star,
Dawns don’t seem so gold . . .
Yet, of course, I know they are:
Guess I’m growing old.

Somehow sunshine seems less bright,
Birds less gladly sing;
Moons don’t thrill me with delight,
There’s no kick in Spring.
Hills are steeper now and I’m
Sensitive to cold;
Lines are not so keen to rhyme . . .
Gosh! I’m growing old.

Yet in spite of failing things
I’ve no cause to grieve;
Age with all its ailing brings
Blessings, I believe:
Kindo’ gentles up the mind
As the hope we hold
That with loving we will find
Friendliness in human kind,
Grace in growing old.

– Growing Old by Robert Service

Sad Hesper o’er the buried sun
; ; ; ;And ready, thou, to die with him,
; ; ; ;Thou watchest all things ever dim
And dimmer, and a glory done:
The team is loosen’d from the wain,
; ; ; ;The boat is drawn upon the shore;
; ; ; ;Thou listenest to the closing door,
And life is darken’d in the brain.
Bright Phosphor, fresher for the night,
; ; ; By thee the world’s great work is heard
; ; ; Beginning, and the wakeful bird;
Behind thee comes the greater light:

The market boat is on the stream,
; ; ; And voices hail it from the brink;
; ; ; Thou hear’st the village hammer clink,
And see’st the moving of the team.

Sweet Hesper-Phosphor, double name
; ; ; For what is one, the first, the last,
; ; ; Thou, like my present and my past,
Thy place is changed; thou art the same.

– In Memoriam A. H. H.: 121. by Lord Alfred Tennyson

Safe in their alabaster chambers,
Untouched by morning and untouched by noon,
Sleep the meek members of the resurrection,
Rafter of satin, and roof of stone.

Light laughs the breeze in her castle of sunshine;
Babbles the bee in a stolid ear;
Pipe the sweet birds in ignorant cadence, –
Ah, what sagacity perished here!

Grand go the years in the crescent above them;
Worlds scoop their arcs, and firmaments row,
Diadems drop and Doges surrender,
Soundless as dots on a disk of snow.

– Safe in their alabaster chambers by Emily Dickinson

Departed to the judgment,
A mighty afternoon;
Great clouds like ushers leaning,
Creation looking on.

The flesh surrendered, cancelled,
The bodiless begun;
Two worlds, like audiences, disperse
And leave the soul alone.

– ASTRA CASTRA – Departed to the judgment by Emily Dickinson

Pensive on her dead gazing I heard the Mother of All,
Desperate on the torn bodies, on the forms covering the battlefields gazing,
(As the last gun ceased, but the scent of the powder-smoke linger’d,)
As she call’d to her earth with mournful voice while she stalk’d,
Absorb them well O my earth, she cried, I charge you lose not my
sons, lose not an atom,
And you streams absorb them well, taking their dear blood,
And you local spots, and you airs that swim above lightly impalpable,
And all you essences of soil and growth, and you my rivers’ depths,
And you mountain sides, and the woods where my dear children’s
blood trickling redden’d,
And you trees down in your roots to bequeath to all future trees,
My dead absorb or South or North–my young men’s bodies absorb,
and their precious precious blood,
Which holding in trust for me faithfully back again give me many a
year hence,
In unseen essence and odor of surface and grass, centuries hence,
In blowing airs from the fields back again give me my darlings, give
my immortal heroes,
Exhale me them centuries hence, breathe me their breath, let not an
atom be lost,
O years and graves! O air and soil! O my dead, an aroma sweet!
Exhale them perennial sweet death, years, centuries hence.

– Pensive on Her Dead Gazing by Walt Whitman

Somehow I cannot let it go yet, funeral though it is,
Let it remain back there on its nail suspended,
With pink, blue, yellow, all blanch’d, and the white now gray and ashy,
One wither’d rose put years ago for thee, dear friend;
But I do not forget thee. Hast thou then faded?
Is the odor exhaled? Are the colors, vitalities, dead?
No, while memories subtly play–the past vivid as ever;
For but last night I woke, and in that spectral ring saw thee,
Thy smile, eyes, face, calm, silent, loving as ever:
So let the wreath hang still awhile within my eye-reach,
It is not yet dead to me, nor even pallid.

– The Pallid Wreath by Walt Whitman

In midnight sleep of many a face of anguish,
Of the look at first of the mortally wounded, (of that indescribable look,)
Of the dead on their backs with arms extended wide,
I dream, I dream, I dream.

Of scenes of Nature, fields and mountains,
Of skies so beauteous after a storm, and at night the moon so
unearthly bright,
Shining sweetly, shining down, where we dig the trenches and
gather the heaps,
I dream, I dream, I dream.

Long have they pass’d, faces and trenches and fields,
Where through the carnage I moved with a callous composure, or away
from the fallen,
Onward I sped at the time–but now of their forms at night,
I dream, I dream, I dream.

– Old War-Dreams by Walt Whitman

When I was daft (as urchins are),
And full if fairy lore,
I aimed an arrow at a star
And hit – the barnyard door.

I’ve shot at heaps of stars since then,
but always it’s the same -
A barnyard door has mocked me when
Uranus was my aim.

So, I’ll shoot starward as of yore,
Though wide my arrows fall;
I’d rather hit a big barn door
Then never aim at all.

– Aspiration by Robert Service

Then Almitra spoke again and said, And what of Marriage, master?

And he answered saying:

You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.

You shall be together when white wings of death scatter your days.

Aye, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.

But let there be spaces in your togetherness,

And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

Love one another but make not a bond of love:

Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.

Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.

Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,

Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.

For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.

And stand together, yet not too near together:

For the pillars of the temple stand apart,

And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.

– Marriage by Khalil Gibran

From off my calendar today
A leaf I tear;
So swiftly passes smiling May
Without a care.
And now the gentleness of June
Will fleetly fly
And I will greet the glamour moon
Of lush July.

Beloved months so soon to pass,
Alas, I see
The slim sand silvering the glass
Of Time for me;
As bodingly midwinter woe
I wait with rue,
Oh how I grudge the days to go!
They are so few.

A Calendar’s a gayful thing
To grace a room;
And though with joy of life I sing,
With secret gloom
I add this merry month of May
To eighty past,
Thinking each page I tear away
May be my last.

– My Calendar by Robert Service