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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=464725" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Mrs. Effingham's Swan Song</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=464725" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I am growing old: I have kept youth too long,<br>But I dare not let them know it now.<br>I have done the heart of youth a grievous wrong,<br>Danced it to dust, and drugged it with the rose,<br>Forced its reluctant lips to one more vow.<br>I have denied the lawful grey,<br>So kind, so wise, to settle in my hair;<br>I belong no more to April, but September has not taught me her repose.<br>I wish I had let myself grow old in the quiet way<br>That is so gracious . . . I wish I did not care.<br>My faded mouth will never flower again,<br>Under the paint, the wrinkles fret my eyes,<br>My hair is dull beneath its henna stain,<br>I have come to the last ramparts of disguise.<br>And now the day draws on of my defeat.<br>I shall not meet<br>The swift, male glance across the crowded room,<br>Where the chance contact of limbs in passing has<br>Its answer in some future fierce embrace.<br>I shall sit here in the corners looking on<br>With the older women, withered and overblown,<br>Who have grown old more graciously than I,<br>In a sort of safe and comfortable tomb<br>Knitting myself into Eternity.<br>And men will talk to me because they are kind,<br>Or as cunning or a courtesy demands;<br>There will be no hidden question in their eyes<br>And no subtle implication in their hands.<br>And I shall be so grateful who have been<br>So gracious, and so tyrannous, moving between<br>Denial and surrender. To-morrow I shall find<br>How women live who have no lovers and no answer for life's grey monotonies.<br>Upon my table will be no more flowers,<br>They will bring me no more flowers until I am dead;<br>There will be no violent, sweet, exciting hours,<br>No wild things done or said.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=464725" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Yet sometimes I'm so tired of it all-<br>This everlasting battle with the flesh,<br>This pitiful slavery to the body's thrall-<br>And then I do not want to lure or charm,<br>I want to wear<br>Soft, easy things, be comfortable and warm;<br>I want to drowse at leisure in my chair.<br>I do not want to wear a veil with heavy mesh,<br>Or sit in shaded rooms afraid to face the light;<br>I do not want to go out every night,<br>And be bright and vivid and intense,<br>Nor be on the alert and the defense<br>With other women, fierce and afraid as I,<br>Drawing a knife unseen as each goes by.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=464725" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I am so tired of men and making love,<br>For every one's the same.<br>There's nothing new in love under the sun;<br>All love can say or do has long been said and done:<br>I have eaten the fruit of knowledge long enough,<br>Been over-kissed, over-praised and over-won.<br>Why should I try to play still the old, foolish game?<br>Because I have played the rose's part too long.<br>Who plays the rose must pay the rose's price,<br>And be a rose or nothing till it dies.<br>And even then sometimes the blood will answer fierce and strong<br>To the old hunger, to the old dance, old tune;<br>I shall feel cruel and passionate and mad<br>Though I have lost the look of June.<br>The fever of the past will burn my hands<br>A men who live long in intemperate lands<br>Feel the old ague wring them, far removed<br>From the old dreadful glitter of seas and sands.<br>The rose dies hard in women who have had<br>Lovers all their lives, and have been much loved.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=464725" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I am afraid to grow old now even if I would.<br>I have fought too well, too long, and what was once<br>A foolish trick to make the rose more strangely gay<br>Is now a close-locked, mortal conflict of brain and blood-<br>A feud too old to settle or renounce.<br>I shall grow too tired to struggle, and the fight will end,<br>And they will enter in at last-<br>Nature and Time, long thwarted of their prey,<br>Those old grey two, more cruel for the lips that said them 'Nay,'<br>For the bitterest foe is he who in the past<br>Has been repulsed when he fain would be friend.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=464725" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I am sorry for women who are growing old,<br>I do not blame them for holding youth with shameful hold,<br>Or doing desperate things to lips and eyes.<br>They have so pitifully short a flowering time,<br>So suddenly sweet a story so soon told.<br>They only strive to keep what men have taught them most to prize-<br>Men who have longer, fuller lives to live,<br>Who are not stopped and broken in their prime,<br>With their faces still to summer, men do not know<br>What Age says to a woman. They would not wait<br>To feel slip from their hands without a throe,<br>Without a struggle, futile and desperate,<br>All that has given them wealth and love and power<br>Doomed, without hope or rumour of reprieve.<br>They would not smile into the eyes of that advancing hour<br>Who had bent all summer to their bow, and had flung<br>The widest rose, and kissed the keenest mouth<br>And slept in the lordliest bed when they were young.<br>That bitter twilight which sun-worshipping Youth<br>Flies headlong keeps Age loitering on the hill,<br>Uneager to fold such greyness to his breast,<br>Knowing that none will thwart him of his will,<br>None be before him on that quest.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=464725" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I am growing old.<br>I was not always kind when I was young<br>To women who were old, for Youth is blind-<br>A small, green, bitter thing beneath its fragrant rind,<br>And fanged against the old with boisterous tongue-<br>Those whose poor morning heads are touched with rime,<br>Walking before their misery like kings.<br>I did not feel that I should feel such stings,<br>Nor flinch beneath such arrows. But now I know.<br>One day I shall be stupid, and rather slow,<br>And easily cowed and troubled in my mind,<br>And tremulous, vaguely frightened, feeble and cold.<br>I am growing old. . . My God! how old! how old!. . .<br>I dare not tell them, but one day they will know. . .<br>I hope they will be kind.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><a href="http://poems.citatepedia.com/">poem</a> by <strong><a rel="author" href="http://authors.citatepedia.com/by.php?a=Muriel+Stuart">Muriel Stuart</a></strong></div>