To be grown up is to sit at the table with people who have died, who neither listen nor speak.

I dread no more the first white in my hair, Or even age itself, the easy shoe, The cane, the wrinkled hands, the special chair: Time, doing this to me, may alter too My anguish, into something I can bear

Cut if you will with sleep's dull knife, the years from off your life, my friend! the years that death takes off my life, he'll take from off the other end!

Ah, I could lay me down in this long grass And close my eyes, and let the quiet wind Blow over me

And what are you that, missing you, I should be kept awake As many nights as there are days With weeping for your sake? And what are you that, missing you, As many days as crawl I should be listening to the wind And looking at the wall? I know a man that’s a braver man And twenty men as kind, And what are you, that you should be The one man in my mind? Yet women’s ways are witless ways, As any sage will tell,— And what am I, that I should love So wisely and so well?

I saw and heard, and knew at last The How and Why of all things, past, and present, and forevermore.

Lord I do fear / Thou'st made the world too beautiful this year.