Mrs. Effingham's Swan Song



I am growing old: I have kept youth too long,
But I dare not let them know it now.
I have done the heart of youth a grievous wrong,
Danced it to dust, and drugged it with the rose,
Forced its reluctant lips to one more vow.
I have denied the lawful grey,
So kind, so wise, to settle in my hair;
I belong no more to April, but September has not taught me her repose.
I wish I had let myself grow old in the quiet way
That is so gracious . . . I wish I did not care.
My faded mouth will never flower again,
Under the paint, the wrinkles fret my eyes,
My hair is dull beneath its henna stain,
I have come to the last ramparts of disguise.
And now the day draws on of my defeat.
I shall not meet
The swift, male glance across the crowded room,
Where the chance contact of limbs in passing has
Its answer in some future fierce embrace.
I shall sit here in the corners looking on
With the older women, withered and overblown,
Who have grown old more graciously than I,
In a sort of safe and comfortable tomb
Knitting myself into Eternity.
And men will talk to me because they are kind,
Or as cunning or a courtesy demands;
There will be no hidden question in their eyes
And no subtle implication in their hands.
And I shall be so grateful who have been
So gracious, and so tyrannous, moving between
Denial and surrender. To-morrow I shall find
How women live who have no lovers and no answer for life's grey monotonies.
Upon my table will be no more flowers,
They will bring me no more flowers until I am dead;
There will be no violent, sweet, exciting hours,
No wild things done or said.

Yet sometimes I'm so tired of it all-
This everlasting battle with the flesh,
This pitiful slavery to the body's thrall-
And then I do not want to lure or charm,
I want to wear
Soft, easy things, be comfortable and warm;
I want to drowse at leisure in my chair.
I do not want to wear a veil with heavy mesh,
Or sit in shaded rooms afraid to face the light;
I do not want to go out every night,
And be bright and vivid and intense,
Nor be on the alert and the defense
With other women, fierce and afraid as I,
Drawing a knife unseen as each goes by.

I am so tired of men and making love,
For every one's the same.
There's nothing new in love under the sun;
All love can say or do has long been said and done:
I have eaten the fruit of knowledge long enough,
Been over-kissed, over-praised and over-won.
Why should I try to play still the old, foolish game?
Because I have played the rose's part too long.
Who plays the rose must pay the rose's price,
And be a rose or nothing till it dies.
And even then sometimes the blood will answer fierce and strong
To the old hunger, to the old dance, old tune;
I shall feel cruel and passionate and mad
Though I have lost the look of June.
The fever of the past will burn my hands
A men who live long in intemperate lands
Feel the old ague wring them, far removed
From the old dreadful glitter of seas and sands.
The rose dies hard in women who have had
Lovers all their lives, and have been much loved.

I am afraid to grow old now even if I would.
I have fought too well, too long, and what was once
A foolish trick to make the rose more strangely gay
Is now a close-locked, mortal conflict of brain and blood-
A feud too old to settle or renounce.
I shall grow too tired to struggle, and the fight will end,
And they will enter in at last-
Nature and Time, long thwarted of their prey,
Those old grey two, more cruel for the lips that said them 'Nay,'
For the bitterest foe is he who in the past
Has been repulsed when he fain would be friend.

I am sorry for women who are growing old,
I do not blame them for holding youth with shameful hold,
Or doing desperate things to lips and eyes.
They have so pitifully short a flowering time,
So suddenly sweet a story so soon told.
They only strive to keep what men have taught them most to prize-
Men who have longer, fuller lives to live,
Who are not stopped and broken in their prime,
With their faces still to summer, men do not know
What Age says to a woman. They would not wait
To feel slip from their hands without a throe,
Without a struggle, futile and desperate,
All that has given them wealth and love and power
Doomed, without hope or rumour of reprieve.
They would not smile into the eyes of that advancing hour
Who had bent all summer to their bow, and had flung
The widest rose, and kissed the keenest mouth
And slept in the lordliest bed when they were young.
That bitter twilight which sun-worship
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

4:24 min read
46

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABACBDECDEXFXFGGHXXXXIHXJKFKXXJCLMLM NONXEXEOPPQQII XRSSXSRAXFATUTKKXKUX XXDXXVWDDWV XXFYXFXYXXDXZXZ1 X1 X
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 4,382
Words 874
Stanzas 5
Stanza Lengths 36, 14, 20, 11, 19

Muriel Stuart

Muriel Stuart was The daughter of a Scottish barrister was a poet particularly concerned with the topic of sexual politics though she first wrote poems about World War I She later gave up poetry writing her last work was published in the 1930s She was born Muriel Stuart Irwin She was hailed by Hugh MacDiarmid as the best woman poet of the Scottish Renaissance although she was not Scottish but English Despite this his comment led to her inclusion in many Scottish anthologies Thomas Hardy described her poetry as Superlatively good Her most famous poem In the Orchard is entirely dialogs and in no kind of verse form which makes it innovative for its time She does use rhyme a mixture of half-rhyme and rhyming couplets abab form Other famous poems of hers are The Seed Shop The Fools and Man and his Makers Muriel also wrote a gardening book called Gardeners Nightcap 1938 which was later reprinted by Persephone Books more…

All Muriel Stuart poems | Muriel Stuart Books

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    Who wrote the poem ״Invictus״?
    A William Ernest Henley
    B Sylvia Plath
    C Thomas Hardy
    D Oscar Wilde