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Show 288 MADELYN CANNON STEWART SILVER The third, "An Old Woman of the Road" in the first book of weariness of a young Irish poet, Padraic Colum, expresses a "mist and dark" and of "roads where there's never a house nor bush." The poet prays to God "for a little house-a house of my own." Finally, Madelyn thought of "The Old Woman" by Joseph Campbell, also a twentieth century Irish poet: As a white candle In a holy place, So is the beauty Of an aged face. As the spent radiance Of the winter sun, So is a woman With her travail done. Her brood gone from her. And her thoughts as still As the waters Under a ruined mill." As Madelyn contemplated this poem, so striking a portrait, be growing old. But she almost she reflected that she might shouted that her thoughts were not still: My thoughts are not still. They are teeming, panting, for oth throbbing for expression. Perhaps they have no value and philosophies of the ers. The young spurn the thoughts old. But perhaps people my own age could be pleased to have their thoughts expressed by me. I am sixty years old. I have the keenest desire to discover and record the meaning of life before I am seventy. For most in their people the meaning of life is discovered in their teens, for me: I dis has been So it forties. their in ripe early thirties, covered it each time. Because Anyway, I am pleased to express them [thoughts]. is selfish, it will be abortive and will soon die. my real writing ' |
