“If we love things long-sought, age is a thing
Which we are fifty years in compassing;
If transitory things, which soon decay,
Age must be loveliest at the latest day.”
It strikes the modern ear as maladroit enough that a woman in her yet sunshiny forties, and a most comely woman to boot, should have required prosody’s ingenious excuses for wrinkles and kindred damages. Was life so hard as that in “the spacious days”? Shakespeare, in agreement with Horace, had already reminded his handsome “Will” of the pitiless and too expeditious hour,
“When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field!”
which also seems, to a nice historical sense, somewhat staggering. The close of Donne’s little homily is perfect, and full of the winning melancholy which was part of his birthright in art, whenever he allowed himself direct and homely expression:
“May still
My love descend! and journey down the hill,