A Minuet

 

On reaching the age of fifty

I

Old Age, on tiptoe, lays her jewelled hand

Lightly in mine.- Come, tread a stately measure,

Most gracious partner, nobly poised and bland.

                   Ours be no boisterous pleasure,

But smiling conversation, with quick glance

And memories dancing lightlier than we dance,

                   Friends who a thousand joys

Divide and double, save one joy supreme

                   Which many a pang alloys.

                   Let wanton girls and boys

Cry over lovers' woes and broken toys.

Our waking life is sweeter than their dream.

II

Dame Nature, with unwitting hand,

Has sparsely strewn the black abyss with lights

Minute, remote, and numberless. We stand

                   Measuring far depths and heights,

                   Arched over by a laughing heaven,

Intangible and never to be scaled.

If we confess our sins, they are forgiven.

                   We triumph, if we know we failed.

III

                   Tears that in youth you shed,

Congealed to pearls, now deck your silvery hair;

                   Sighs breathed for loves long dead

Frosted the glittering atoms of the air

                   Into the veils you wear

Round your soft bosom and most queenly head;

                   The shimmer of your gown

Catches all tints of autumn, and the dew

Of gardens where the damask roses blew;

The myriad tapers from these arches hung

                   Play on your diamonded crown;

And stars, whose light angelical caressed

                   Your virgin days,

Give back in your calm eyes their holier rays.

                   The deep past living in your breast

                   Heaves these half-merry sighs;

                   And the soft accents of your tongue

                   Breathe unrecorded charities.

IV

                  

Hasten not; the feast will wait.

This is a master-night without a morrow.

No chill and haggard dawn, with after-sorrow,

                   Will snuff the spluttering candle out,

Or blanch the revellers homeward straggling late.

                   Before the rout

Wearies or wanes, will come a calmer trance.

Lulled by the poppied fragrance of this bower,

                   We'll cheat the lapsing hour,

And close our eyes, still smiling, on the dance.

 

 

 

 

George Santayana