She kept her songs, they kept so little space, <br />The covers pleased her: <br />One bleached from lying in a sunny place, <br />One marked in circles by a vase of water, <br />One mended, when a tidy fit had seized her, <br />And coloured, by her daughter - <br />So they had waited, till, in widowhood <br />She found them, looking for something else, and stood <br /> <br />Relearning how each frank submissive chord <br />Had ushered in <br />Word after sprawling hyphenated word, <br />And the unfailing sense of being young <br />Spread out like a spring-woken tree, wherein <br />That hidden freshness sung, <br />That certainty of time laid up in store <br />As when she played them first. But, even more, <br /> <br />The glare of that much-mentionned brilliance, love, <br />Broke out, to show <br />Its bright incipience sailing above, <br />Still promising to solve, and satisfy, <br />And set unchangeably in order. So <br />To pile them back, to cry, <br />Was hard, without lamely admitting how <br />It had not done so then, and could not now.<br /><br />Philip Larkin<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/love-songs-in-age/
