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Classic and Contemporary Poetry


FOR THOSE GROWING OLD by WINIFRED ADAMS BURR

First Line: O YOU WHO THROUGH INEXORABLE YEARS
Last Line: THAT WHEN THE BODY DIES, IS BEAUTY BORN!
Subject(s): AGING; BEAUTY; BODIES; DEATH; GRIEF; DEAD, THE; SORROW; SADNESS;

O you who through inexorable years
Have worn the fraying garments of the flesh,
Now lay aside the measure of your fears
While ravelled fabric slips a looser mesh.

For lightly as the sun-enamoured fawn
Leaps from the covert of his sombrous dell,
Shall you emerge into a heavenly dawn
From out those shadowy purlieus where you dwell,
And your swift-fading vesture of despair
Shall settle softly back among the leaves,
The residue become more strangely fair.
Then of the sorrow that your present grieves
Naught shall remain.
Remember, O forlorn,
That when the body dies, is beauty born!



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