At Eighteen On Life

At Eighteen On Life
(Elizabethan Sonnet, 1964, Stetson University English)

As seeing eighteen summers doth not sate;
As youth brings not the world within full view;
As being young is challenge to create,
And answering the challenge is one's due:

As eighteen years is not my fill of life;
As loving once is only loving love;
As losing love is but to taste of strife,
And strife is what makes souls aspire above:

I only hope that life and love will last,
As long as this poor puzzled soul doth crave
The answer to this miracle of man;

To live and love not only for the past,
But to have lived all things before the grave,
And then to say my life had marked a span.

Mary Ann Curmanskie