To wish Myself Courage

On the day when youth is no more upon me

I will write of the leaves and the moon in a tree top!

I will sing then the song, long in the making —

When the stress of youth is put away from me.

How can I ever be written out as men say?

Surely it is merely an interference with the long song —

This that I am now doing.

But when the spring of it is worn like the old moon

And the eaten leaves are lace upon the cold earth —

Then I will rise up in my great desire —

Long at the birth — and sing me the youth-song!