Poem: “Not all beauty succumbs to time”

By Thomas Troeger

Not all beauty succumbs to time.

–

Oh, yes –

I know

the blooms of spring,

summer’s effulgence,

the flames of autumn –

all flare, fade and die.

–

But there is a beauty that

deepens, spreads and persists

in time

and past time:

–

I have glimpsed it

and it has detained my glance,

till I can hardly look

for the shining of it:

the beauty I saw in the bud

when you were young,

now in full bloom

but instead of fading

deepening,

deepening toward the mother

who brings forth all things.

–

Here, take these autumn flowers,

place them in the sun

before the frost comes tonight,

and while the delight of momentary color

plays in your eyes,

I will glimpse

what the descending cold

can never touch.

“Not all beauty succumbs to time” from God, You Made All Things for Singing: Hymn Texts, Anthems, and Poems for a New Millennium (Oxford University Press, 2009). Copyright © by Thomas H. Troeger. Reprinted with permission of Oxford University Press.