Inconstant Beauty

An Illustrated Poem from the Past

I read this and knew I had to include it. You see, I live this daily… I am well past middle-aged, but in my husband’s eyes I see myself reflected as he sees me. It is a humbling and wonderful experience. I’ll never grow old to him, never wrinkle and fade. I’ll always be his beauty, and that is more than enough.

Grieve Not, Ladies

Oh, grieve not, Ladies, if at night
Ye wake to feel your beauty going;
It was a web of frail delight,
Inconstant as an April snowing.

In other eyes, in other lands,
In deep fair pools, new beauty lingers;
But like spent water in your hands
It runs from your reluctant fingers.

You shall not keep the singing lark
That owes to earlier skies its duty.
Weep not to hear along the dark
The sound of your departing beauty.

The fine and anguished ear of night
Is tuned to hear the smallest sorrow:
Oh, wait until the morning light!
It may not seem so gone tomorrow!

But honey-pale and rosy red!
Brief lights that make a little shining!
Beautiful looks about us shed--
They leave us to the old repining.

Think not the watchful, dim despair
Has come to you, the first, sweet-hearted!
For oh, the gold in Helen's hair!
And how she cried when that departed!

Perhaps that one that took the most,
The swiftest borrower, wildest spender,
May count, as we would not, the cost--
And grow more true to us and tender.

Happy are we if in his eyes
We see no shadow of forgetting.
Nay--if our star sinks in those skies
We shall not wholly see its setting.

Then let us laugh as do the brooks,
That such immortal youth is ours,
If memory keeps for them our looks
As fresh as are the springtime flowers.

So grieve not, Ladies, if at night
Ye wake to feel the cold December!
Rather recall the early light,
And in your loved one's arms, remember.

—Anna Hempstead Branch