Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be
Pretty sure my husband wooed me with that Browning couplet a time or two back in the day. On Saturday, we celebrate our 35th anniversary! (We were babes of 21 when we got married. My mother made my dress from scratch, with 2,000 seed pearls and no time to spare. Seriously, a half hour before the ceremony, I was wearing a tee shirt and gym shorts. I come by my life-on-the-edge habits honestly.)
These are the opening lines to a long poem titled "Rabbi Ben Ezra." Here's the first stanza:
Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in His hand
Who saith "A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!''
You can read the whole poem here.
It's not a romantic poem, actually, but a poem told in the voice of a 12th century rabbi and scholar, about being molded throughout life by the hand of the divine Potter. And it's a good read if you have a few decades under the soles of your shoes!
It was published in Browning's Dramatis Personae in 1864. My old Norton Anthology of English Literature from college notes, "The speaker, Abraham Ibn Ezra (ca. 1092-1167), was an eminent Biblical scholar of Spain, but Browining makes little attempt to present him as a distinct individual or to relate him to the age in which he lived. Unlike the more characteristic monologues, Rabbi Ben Ezra is not dramatic but declamatory."
A little heady, no? For a more breezy poetic welcome to summer, visit our wonderful Linda at A Word Edgewise for this week's Roundup! Clunkers welcome... you'll see. ;0) (I'm a little late to the party this Friday; our internet was down all Thursday night. I will be away from the computer most of the weekend but look forward to catching up in snatches.)
HAPPY SUMMER SOLSTICE!