Day 6: On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Fifth Year

Lord Byron asked, If thou regrets thy youth,
Why live?  At thirty-six, that man for whom
Regret-made sonnets to that beauty-truth
That Keats perceived, and Shelley nursed to bloom,
Ought not to be so plenty, on that day
O’erflowed in somber poesy; here, the dearth
Of love’s fair promise mourned; and they,
Once poet-praised, who bled upon the earth
Of Grecian fields, Byron rendered fair,
Their angry waste, their nigh-Romantic goal
Translated, Grecian valor through despair,
By Byron’s gentle verse and English soul!
And turning thirty-five, I glance ahead,
Seeing nothing of the worthy English dead.