What though long waiting wins more happiness Than petulant desire is wont to gain, My luck in latest age hath brought me pain, Thinking how brief must be an old man's bliss. Heaven, if it heed our lives, can hardly bless This fire of love when frosts are wont to reign: For so I love thee, lady, and my strain Of tears through age exceeds in tenderness. Yet peradventure though my day is done,-- Though nearly past the setting mid thick cloud And frozen exhalations sinks my sun,-- If love to only mid-day be allowed, And I an old man in my evening burn, You, lady, still my night to noon may turn.
From happy tears to woeful smiles, from peace Eternal to a brief and hollow truce, How have I fallen!--when 'tis truth we lose, Sense triumphs o'er all adverse impulses. I know not if my heart bred this disease, That still more pleasing grows with growing use; Or else thy face, thine eyes, which stole the hues And fires of Paradise--less fair than these. Thy beauty is no mortal thing; 'twas sent From heaven on high to make our earth divine: Wherefore, though wasting, burning, I'm content; For in thy sight what could I do but pine? If God himself thus rules my destiny, Who, when I die, can lay the blame on thee?
Had I but earlier known that from the eyes Of that bright soul that fires me like the sun, I might have drawn new strength my race to run, Burning as burns the phoenix ere it dies; Even as the stag or lynx or leopard flies To seek his pleasure and his pain to shun, Each word, each smile of her would I have won, Flying where now sad age all flight denies. Yet why complain? For even now I find In that glad angel's face, so full of rest, Health and content, heart's ease and peace of mind Perchance I might have been less simply blest, Finding her sooner: if 'tis age alone That lets me soar with her to seek God's throne.
Bring back the time when blind desire ran free, With bit and rein too loose to curb his flight; Give back the buried face, once angel-bright, That hides in earth all comely things from me; Bring back those journeys ta'en so toilsomely, So toilsome-slow to one whose hairs are white; Those tears and flames that in one breast unite; If thou wilt once more take thy fill of me! Yet Love! Suppose it true that thou dost thrive Only on bitter honey-dews of tears. Small profit hast thou of a weak old man. My soul that toward the other shore doth strive, Wards off thy darts with shafts of holier fears; And fire feeds ill on brands no breath can fan.