Explore "An Old Heart" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
How young I am! Ah! heaven, this curse of youth / Doth mock me from my mirror with great eyes, / And pulsing veins repeat the unwelcome truth, / That I must live, though hope within me dies.
So young, and yet I have had all of life. / Why, men have lived to see a hundred years, / Who have not known the rapture, joy, and strife / Of my brief youth, its passion and its tears.
Oh! what are years? A ripe three score and ten / Hold often less of life, in its best sense, / Than just a twelvemonth lived by other men, / Whose high-strung souls are ardent and intense.
But having seen all depths and scaled all heights, / Having a heart love thrilled, and sorrow wrung, / Knowing all pains, all pleasures, all delights, / Now I would die -- but cannot, being young.
Nothing is left me, but supreme despair; / The bitter dregs that tell of wasted wine. / Come furrowed brow, dull eye, and frosted hair, / Companions fit for this old heart of mine.