the years of tremulous wonder

The snap here, is of the front cover of a hard-back (1950) edition of Philip Freund's 'Private Speech' poetry collection ...

... I've never come across this hard-back copy before, and was delighted to find it in a second-hand bookshop recently :-)

Freund's poetry is (I think) also rather good - here's the poem, from within this volume, that's mentioned in his earlier linked obituary:


At Twenty Five

For how many years, now that Time's bird with wide wings
Swoops again and clutches me fast, dragging me upward,
For how many years am I to be grateful?
For the virginal years, for the years of tremulous wonder,
The voluptuous years, and this last year refined
To a cool and delicious perception.
Like to Ganymede, freed of the Jovian thunderclap shadow,
The bird's darksome fold of the boy to its breast
A moment released,
The whole wide earth shining :
Time's face, that of death;
Do I pause.
And still a short promise of youth.

---

Philip Freund (1909 - 2007)

---