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The Lantern

Your heart sags wrinkled now

Old and grey before its time

Ravages shown in bandy legs

A heavy toll of frost and rime

 

Tarry not till your heart is old

Make hay afore night descends

Time rips fast and none knows

When life sinks low and ends

 

Once your heart was fanciful

Joys were the order of the day

Now its an armchair and pills

Listening to what doctors say

 

Tarry not till your heart is old

Make hay afore night descends

Time rips fast and none knows

When life sinks low and ends

 

You had a wife, and lovers too

Sins so easy to remember now

Remorse twists amid your soul

Furrows plough that aged brow

 

Tarry not till your heart is old

Make hay afore night descends

Time rips fast and none knows

When life sinks low and ends

 

Is that a lantern at the casement?

A hooded figure points the way

You shudder, that old heart stops

Nevermore to beat another day

 

Tarry not till your heart is old

Make hay afore night descends

Time rips fast and none knows

When life sinks low and ends

 

 

hooded figureoldsinsthe lanterntimewrinkled heart

◄ Ashes Are Better Than Nothing

The Conscience You Never Had ►

Comments

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John Coopey

Sat 10th Oct 2020 09:40

Enjoyed this, Simon. “Do not go gently” meets “To his coy mistress”. Not long before he died my sister asked my dad if he’d any regrets in his life. “I wish I’d made love to more women” he said. True wisdom.

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M.C. Newberry

Fri 9th Oct 2020 12:55

I found myself chanting these lines like a dirge. On with the sackcloth and ashes!
Age is a reality when you are closer to your doctor than to your
relations. ?
Just keep smiling - and adapting to the joke that is life while remembering that some are not allowed to enjoy getting older, let alone "old age"..

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