When I Am Old / Marjorie Allen Seiffert

When I Am Old

I still shall love the spring when I am old.
The whisper of April rain
Through grey-green days, upon my window-pane,
Shall speak as now of mornings bright and fine –
The days of gold,    
When sticky buds, bursting with leafy wonder,
Turn every one into a gay cockade,
Worn tilted up or tilted under
Those twisty April branches, bare of shade.

Though every April night is a green frame
For lovers, they but fit the old design
Earth never has outworn;
And without envy I shall say,
Nodding my head, “It used to be the same
In my own day!”

~~
Marjorie Allen Seiffert (1885-1970)
from Poetry, April 1918

[Poem is in the public domain in the United States]

Marjorie Allen Seiffert biography