PASSING OF YOUTH (A waterfront reverie)

Posted by Admin on 28 March 2008, 12:00 am

What happiness my musings bring
to this soft-tinctured morning’s light:
unpennoned, restless barges swing,
with dawn-extinguished lamps bedight.

The voyaging of youth is done:
its tenor and its highlights vie;
at peace, my weary heart heeds none,
long-surfeited of waves and sky.

And ceasing to be outward bound,
it wisely shuns the oft-met sea;
betrothéd now, with hawser wound
through iron rings, to ancient quay.

Translation from the French poem by Henri de Regnier.

T. C. Hudson