We Long for Youth

When youth meets age, passion urged to mellowness,
Ourselves engaged with
Time, the unacknowledged guest,
Often turns our thoughts toward Death.

Innocense lost!
Oh, anger’s cost!
In old age we know our truths!
Our children grown
With babies of their own,
As memories live—we long for youth,
Oh how we long for youth.

This is a response poem to T. E. Brown's poem, When Love Meets Love.  Here is Brown's poem:


WHEN love meets love, breast urged to breast,
God interposes,
An unacknowledged guest,
And leaves a little child among our roses.
O, gentle hap!
O, sacred lap!
O, brooding dove!
But when he grows
Himself to be a rose,
God takes him—where is then our love?
O, where is all our love?