THE SPRING AND THE FALL

My heart is like a flower, That drops away from the stem, When Time has bared his arm, And fleets, a weary thing, On the sun-blistered air.

Then I must stand and watch, As spring gives way to fall; And all about me flutter The dried leaves of the past.

O Love! So sweet, so long, For a fleeting, wand’ring hour, Has o’er me held its sway— The life that’s in the small, In the folding of a rose, In the beating of my heart.

As Spring renews the Earth, So may it renew me too, So I shall live again— Amid flower, leaf, and dew.

• Edna St Vincent Millay