To Wish Myself Courage

On the day when youth is no more upon me
I will write of the leaves and the moon in a tree top!
I will sing then the song, long in the making⁠—
When the stress of youth is put away from me.

How can I ever be written out as men say?
Surely it is merely an interference with the long song⁠—
This that I am now doing.

But when the spring of it is worn like the old moon
And the eaten leaves are lace upon the cold earth⁠—
Then I will rise up in my great desire⁠—
Long at the birth⁠—and sing me the youth-song!