Explore "My First Gray Hair" by Mary Alice Walton on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
/ One day amid brown tresses there gleamed a silvery thread, / Life pages, past and present I wonderingly then read. / I saw a blithsome maiden, a child serenely fair, / A woman heavey laden now lifts her first gray hair.
CHORUS.
O silvery strand, thou soft kiss of time, / The beauties of youth are now past, are now past. / For evening of life are pleasures unknown, / 'Tis love, only love, that will last, that will last.
Upon the shadowy threshold the small gray strand did lay, / And told the old, old story of ever changing day; / Within the mystic portals of life's near ending stream / I stood and pondered vaguely, if death were but a dream.
I viewed the snow-white message and thought of bygone years, / The hopes, the waging conflicts, joys mingled oft' with tears. / Tell me, thou thing of pearl hue, what will the future greet? / Will paths be strewn with roses, or thistles tear my feet?
A whisper floated near me in accents sweet and low, / "My child, what'er thy portion, if tares for thee will grow, / Thy soul keep pure and stainless, a crown thy brow shall wear, / 'Twill shine with whitest tresses, that once was nut-brown hair."