Age saw two quiet children Go loving by at twilight, He knew not whether homeward, Or outward from the village, Or (chimes were ringing) churchward, He waited (they were strangers) Till they were out of hearing To bid them both be happy. "Be happy, happy, happy, And seize the day of pleasure." The age-long theme is Age's. 'Twas Age imposed on poems Their gather-roses burden To warn against the danger That overtaken lovers From being overflooded With happiness should have it. And yet not know they have it. But bid life seize the present? It lives less in the present Than in the future always, And less in both together Than in the past. The present Is too much for the senses, Too crowding, too confusing— Too present to imagine.

From The Poetry of Robert Frost edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright © 1923, 1947, 1969 by Henry Holt and Company, copyright © 1942, 1951 by Robert Frost, copyright © 1970, 1975 by Lesley Frost Ballantine. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.

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Poems by This Author

"Out, Out—" by Robert Frost The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yard A Line-storm Song by Robert Frost The line-storm clouds fly tattered and swift Acquainted with the Night by Robert Frost I have been one acquainted with the night After Apple-Picking by Robert Frost My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree An Old Man's Winter Night by Robert Frost All out-of-doors looked darkly in at him Birches by Robert Frost When I see birches bend to left and right Blueberries by Robert Frost You ought to have seen what I saw on my way Bond and Free by Robert Frost Love has earth to which she clings Christmas Trees by Robert Frost The city had withdrawn into itself Design by Robert Frost I found a dimpled spider, fat and white, Directive by Robert Frost Back out of all this now too much for us Dust of Snow by Robert Frost The way a crow Fire and Ice by Robert Frost Some say the world will end in fire For Once, Then, Something by Robert Frost Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs Ghost House by Robert Frost I dwell in a lonely house I know Going for Water by Robert Frost The well was dry beside the door Home Burial by Robert Frost He saw her from the bottom of the stairs Meeting and Passing by Robert Frost As I went down the hill along the wall Mending Wall by Robert Frost Something there is that doesn't love a wall, Mowing by Robert Frost There was never a sound beside the wood but one Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost Nature's first green is gold October by Robert Frost O hushed October morning mild Reluctance by Robert Frost Out through the fields and the woods Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost Whose woods these are I think I know The Death of the Hired Man by Robert Frost Mary sat musing on the lamp-flame at the table The Oven-Bird by Robert Frost There is a singer everyone has heard The Pasture by Robert Frost I'm going out to clean the pasture spring The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost Two roads diverged in a yellow wood The Sound of the Trees by Robert Frost I wonder about the trees To Earthward by Robert Frost Love at the lips was touch

Further Reading

Carpe Diem A Shropshire Lad, II by A. E. Housman As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII [All the world's a stage] by William Shakespeare Three Airs for the Beggar’s Opera, Air XXII by John Gay Twelfth Night, Act II, Scene III [O Mistress mine, where are you roaming?] by William Shakespeare A Psalm of Life by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow A Song On the End of the World by Czeslaw Milosz Another Song [Are they shadows that we see?] by Samuel Daniel Archaic Torso of Apollo by Rainer Maria Rilke Barter by Sara Teasdale Be Drunk by Charles Baudelaire Carpe Diem: Poems for Making the Most of Time Daphnis and Chloe by Haniel Long Days by Ralph Waldo Emerson Dreams by Langston Hughes Exact by Rae Armantrout First Fig by Edna St. Vincent Millay I Have News for You by Tony Hoagland I saw a man pursuing the horizon by Stephen Crane I tie my Hat—I crease my Shawl (443) by Emily Dickinson If— by Rudyard Kipling Live Blindly and Upon the Hour by Trumbull Stickney My life closed twice before its close (96) by Emily Dickinson My life has been the poem I would have writ by Henry David Thoreau Nothing Twice by Wislawa Szymborska O Me! O Life! by Walt Whitman O, Gather Me the Rose by William Ernest Henley Refresh. Refresh. Refresh. by Noah Eli Gordon Song of Myself, III by Walt Whitman Song to Celia by Ben Jonson Thanatopsis by William Cullen Bryant the gate by Tadeusz Różewicz The Layers by Stanley Kunitz The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell To Rosa by Abraham Lincoln To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time by Robert Herrick Vitae Summa Brevis Spem Nos Vetat Incohare Longam by Ernest Dowson We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths by Philip James Bailey When I consider every thing that grows (Sonnet 15) by William Shakespeare You Can't Have It All by Barbara Ras