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  • On a Birthday
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On a Birthday

Marion Angus

Time, why are you going so fast?
I like not furious paces.
Milestones glimmer and then are past,
White, solemn faces.

I’m coming near to Forever and Ever,
With its flower and leaf unfalling,
Where you, poor Time, are an ancient measure,
Fit for a dream’s recalling.

And fain am I to turn again,
Before this journey’s ended,
For a long, long look at the road I came,
So rough and dark and – splendid!


Marion Angus

from The Singin Lass: selected works of Marion Angus (Polygon, 2006)

Reproduced by permission of Polygon.

Tags:

ageing birthdays mortality time
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Marion Angus1865 - 1946

Coming late in her life to poetry, Marion Angus wrote during the 1920s, frequently in her native Scots, poems  suggesting social and emotional rejection, and on the ballad-themes of lost love and unquiet spirits.
More about Marion Angus

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