Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE ODE OF DECLINE, by LEWIS MORRIS (1833-1907)


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE ODE OF DECLINE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: With forces well-nigh spent
Last Line: And bloom as lilies again beneath the recovered skies.
Subject(s): Old Age


WITH forces well-nigh spent,
Uneasy or in pain,
Or brought to childish weakness once again,
With bodies shrunk and bent,
We come, if Fate so will, to cold decrepit age.
The book of Life lies open at its latest page.

Only four score of summers, and four score
Of winters, nothing more,
And then 'tis done.
We have spent our fruitful days beneath the sun;
We come to a cold season and a bare,
Where little is sweet or fair.
We, who a few brief years ago,
Would passionately go
Across the fields of life to meet the morn,
We are content, content and not forlorn,
To lie upon our beds, and watch the Day
Which kissed the Eastern peaks, grow gradually grey.

Great Heaven, that Thou hast made our lives so brief
And swiftly spent!
We toil our little day and are content,
Though Time, the thief,
Stands at our side, and smiles his mystic smile.
We joy a little, we grieve a little while;
We gain some little glimpse of Thy great laws,
Rolling in thunder through the voids of space;
We gain to look a moment on Thy face,
Eternal Source and Cause!
And then, the night descending as a cloud,
We walk with aspect bowed,
And turn to earth and see our Life grow dark.
Was it for this the fiery spark
Of Thy Eternal Self, sown on the vast
And infinite abysses of the Past,
Revealed itself and made Creation rise
Before Thy Eternal Mind:
This little span of life, with purblind eyes
That grow completely blind;
This little force of brain,
Holding dim thoughts sublime,
Too weak to withstand the treacheries of Time;
This body bent and bowed in twain,
Soon racked by growing pain,
Which briefer far than is the life of the tree,
Springs as a flower and fades, and then must rot
And perish and be not,
Passing from mystery to mystery?

It is a pain
To move through the old fields, -- even though they lie
Before our eyes, we know that never again,
Where once our daily feet were used to pass
Amid the crested grass,
We any more shall wander till we die;
Nor to the old grey church, with the tall spire,
Whose vane the sunsets fire,
Where once a little child, by kind hands led,
Would spell the scant memorials of the dead, --
Never again, or once alone,
When pain and Time are done.

The soaring thoughts of youth
Are dead and cold, the victories of Thought
Are no more prized or sought
By eyes which draw too near the face of Truth.
Whatever fruit or gain
Fate held in store
To tempt the growing soul or brain,
Allures no more.
It is as the late Autumn, when the fields
Are bare of flower or fruit;
Nor charm nor profit the swept surface yields,
Sullen and mute;
So that a doubting mind might come to hold
The very soul and life were dead and cold.

But who can peer
Into another soul, or tell at all
What hidden energies befall
The aged lingering here?
When all the weary brain
Seems dull, the immeasurable fields of life
Lie open to the memory, and again
They know the youthful joys, the hurry and the strife,
And feel, but gentlier now, the ancient pain.
In the uneasy vigils of the night,
Before the tardy light;
Or, lonely days, when no young lives are by,
There come such long processions of the dead,
The buried lives and hopes of far-off years,
Spent joys and dried-up tears,
That round them stands a blessed company,
Holding high converse, though no word be said,
Till only what is past and gone doth seem
To live, and all the Present is a dream.

So may the wintry earth,
Holding her precious seeds within the ground,
Pause for the coming birth,
When like a clarion-note the Spring shall sound;
So may the roots which, buried deep
And safe within her sleep,
Whisper as 'twere, low down, tales of the sun, --
Whisper of leaf and flower, of bee and bird, --
Till by a sudden glory stirred,
A mystic influence bids them rise,
Bursting the narrow sheath
And cerement of death,
And bloom as lilies again beneath the recovered skies.





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