Eldest Daughter is leaving today to go to graduate school in Nashville, and I am missing her already. So I’m posting this poem for her, because she says it’s one of her favorites. (She said choosing a favorite poem was too hard.)

As I Walked Out One Evening
by W. H. Auden

As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
‘Love has no ending.

‘I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,

‘I’ll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.

Things sort of go downhill for Auden after that, until “the crack in the tea-cup opens/ A lane to the land of the dead.” Read the rest of the poem at Poets.org.

However, it’s a rather facile reaction, but that first part of Auden’s poem reminds me of this song by Jerry Livingston and Paul Francis Webster:

You ask me how much I need you, must I explain?
I need you, oh my darling, like roses need rain
You ask how long I’ll love you, I’ll tell you true
Until the Twelfth of Never, I’ll still be loving you

Hold me close, never let me go
Hold me close, melt my heart like April snow

I’ll love you ’til the bluebells forget to bloom
I’ll love you ’til the clover has lost its perfume
I’ll love you ’til the poets run out of rhyme
Until the Twelfth of Never and that’s a long, long time

Until the Twelfth of Never and that’s a long, long time . . .

Ah, those were the days . . . Donny Osmond, and bell bottom pants, and Gogo boots.

We’re going to miss you, Miss Eldest, until the Twelfth of Never and until the salmon sing in the street.

(Listen to Donny the Heartthrob here on Youtube.)

Poetry Friday round-up is at Becky’s Book Reviews today.