How a mind under such uncertain circumstances could retain so comparatively placid a vein is one of those marvels which find their explanation in the inherent trustfulness of the spirit of youth.
It is not often that the minds of men retain the perceptions of their younger days.
The marvel is not that one should thus retain, but that any should ever lose them Go the world over, and after you have put away the wonder and tenderness of youth what is there left? The few sprigs of green that sometimes invade the barrenness of your materialism, the few glimpses of summer which flash past the eye of the wintry soul, the half hours off during the long tedium of burrowing, these reveal to the hardened earth-seeker the universe which the youthful mind has with it always.
No fear and no favor; the open fields and the light upon the hills; morning, noon, night; stars, the bird-calls, the water's purl—these are the natural inheritance of the mind of the child.
Men call it poetic, those who are hardened fanciful.
He slipped his brittle ivory legs down from the bed, marveling at their desiccation. They seemed to be things which had been fastened to his body while he slept one night, while his younger legs were taken off and burned in the cellar furnace. Over the years, they had destroyed all of him, removing hands, arms, and legs and leaving him with substitutes as delicate and useless as chess pieces. And now they were tampering with something more intangible— the memory; they were trying to cut the wires which led back into another year.
...of which the weary breast
Would still, albeit in vain, the heavy heart divest.
When forty winters shall beseige thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now,
Will be a tatter'd weed, of small worth held:
Then being ask'd where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days,
To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserved thy beauty's use,
If thou couldst answer 'This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count and make my old excuse,'
Proving his beauty by succession thine!
This were to be new made when thou art old,
And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.
Versprechen und halten ziemt Jungen und Alten.
How to keep — is there any any, is there none such, nowhere known some, bow or brooch or braid or brace, lace, latch or catch or key to keep
Back beauty, keep it, beauty, beauty, beauty... from vanishing away?
O is there no frowning of these wrinkles, ranked wrinkles deep,
Down? No waving off of these most mournful messengers, still messengers, sad and stealing messengers of grey?
No there’s none, there’s none, O no there’s none,
Nor can you long be, what you now are, called fair,
Do what you may do, what, do what you may,
And wisdom is early to despair:
Be beginning.
Edepol, senectus, si nihil quicquam aliud viti adportes tecum, cum advenis, unum id sat est, quod diu vivendo multa quae non volt videt.