Philip Larkin. Love Songs In Age.

She kept her songs, they kept so little space,The covers pleased her:One bleached from lying in a sunny place,One marked in circles by a vase of water,One mended, when a tidy fit had seized her, And coloured, by her daughter -So they had waited, till, in widowhoodShe found them, looking for something else, and stoodRelearning how each frank submissive chordHad ushered inWord after sprawling hyphenated word,And the unfailing sense of being youngSpread out like a spring-woken tree, whereinThat hidden freshness sung,That certainty of time laid up in storeAs when she played them first. But, even more,The glare of that much-mentionned brilliance, love,Broke out, to showIts bright incipience sailing above,Still promising to solve, and satisfy,And set unchangeably in order. So To pile them back, to cry,Was hard, without lamely admitting howIt had not done so then, and could not now.