When I consider how my life is spent II

by

J.H.L.Mintoon


When I consider how my life is spent,
When hair is torn and bosom rent
And dreary thoughts of half a hundred
Divide my time
And weary recollections of the ways
Of empty life, no man displays
The feelings of a soul that never meant
To grace my rhyme.

My rhyme is now untrammelled by the past
And flows and runs in metres slow and fast
I lie bewildered in the buttercups
Beyond my gaze
And watch the sky pall as it now erupts
While some lone hermit in the forest sups
And lives among the trees, in peace at last,
And heav'nly ways.

And though the woodland paths appear serene
And show no trace of where the god has been
These fifty days I've watched in case he stirs
And sees the fire
And on the mortal side of Nature errs
as mortal in his way as she in hers
And she forgets to change the verdant green
And must expire.