Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, CE QUI DURE, by RENE FRANCOIS ARMAND PRUDHOMME



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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

CE QUI DURE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: How cold and wan the present lowers
Last Line: Then thou hast, love! That deathless heart.
Alternate Author Name(s): Sully-prudhomme
Subject(s): Aging; Transience; Youth; Impermanence


HOW cold and wan the present lowers,
O my true Love! around us twain;
How little of the Past is ours!
How changed the friends who yet remain.

We cannot without envying view
The eyes with twenty summers gay;
For eyes 'neath which our childhood grew
Have long since passed from earth away.

Each hour still steals our youth: alas!
No hour will e'er the theft restore:
There's but one thing that will not pass, --
The heart I loved thee with of yore.

That heart, where nothing new can light,
Where old thoughts draw their cherished breath, --
It loves thee, dear, with all the might
That Life can wield in strife with Death.

If it of Death the conqueror be,
If there's in Man some nobler part
That wins him immortality, --
Then thou hast, Love! that deathless heart.






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