Explore "Age Comes a-Wooing" by Joyce Kilmer on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
With shameless and incessant lust / Thy tremulous hot hands are thrust / Upon my body's loveliness. / O loathsome Age, thy foul caress / Puts on my heart a deadly blight, / Withers my hair to leprous white, / Binds fetters on my eager feet / That once on Springtime's road were fleet / To bear me to Love's shining goal. / Now bitter tides of sorrow roll / To drown me in a sea of woe / And God looks on, and wills it so!
Give over thy pursuing, Age! / Fearest thou not my lover's rage? / For he is young and strong of limb, / Thou canst not stand a bout with him. / Ah, surely he will laugh to see / So wan a suitor wooing me. / Then with wild scorn his heart will swell / And he will fling thee back to hell.