Wednesday, October 29, 2003

When You are old

I spent some time in care homes this morning, visiting those who can't get out to church any more.


It's amazing how we regress into childlikeness as we age and draw near our own death. We get to the place where these bodies that have carried babies in them, and done hard work on farms, and have travelled and read hundreds of books with deep thoughts in them, eventually need someone to feed them and change them.


We who are so strong, in the end, need somebody strong to carry us Home. 


 




When You Are Old
by William Butler Yeats


When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;


How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;


And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmer, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.



4 comments:

  1. Great poem. Check this one out ...



    THE FARMER, SPEAKING OF MONUMENTS

    By Wendell Berry



    Always, on their generation?s breaking wave,

    men think to be immortal in the world,

    as though to leap from water and stand

    in air were simple for a man. But the farmer

    knows no work or act of his can deep him

    here. He remains in what he serves

    by vanishing in it, becoming what he never was.

    He will not be immortal in words.

    All his sentences serve an art of the commonplace,

    to open the body of a woman or a field

    to take him in. His words all turn

    to leaves, answering the sun with mute

    quick reflections. Leaving their seed, his hands

    have had a million graves, from which wonders

    rose, bearing him no likeness. At summer?s

    height he is surrounded by green, his

    doing, standing for him, awake and orderly.

    In autumn, all his monuments fall.





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  2. That was a good one too.

    I don't know what's making me dig out some old poetry, but I think it might be the weather.



    It snowed a bit here today.

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  3. Hey Steve, I know you will be having a full house, so I'm praying for you guys this weekend.

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  4. Thanks Randall ... we'll need it.

    Keep the old poetry coming ... I love it.

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