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When you are old and gray and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
And of that time when all the buds, that keep
Their greenness all the April through at morn,
Are scattered by the wind and lie forlorn;
You'll find there all my thought, all my desire,
Your beauty, with your name entwined, and there,
Like fading rose leaves with their fragrant air,
My vanished days, my love that had no peer.
Then you, remembering me, will softly say
With pity for the loving past you knew,
As one for her lost youth who grieves anew,
"Ronsard loved me!"