Grow Old Along With Me

I wrote Grow Old Along With Me in honor of my wife, Judith, to be sung at our wedding. This piece is actually a joint effort, since we both selected the text. It was Judith’s idea to use Robert Browning, and she chose as our theme the famous first lines from Browning’s poem, Rabbi Ben Ezra. We then read through several volumes of Browning’s work until we discovered Any Wife to Any Husband, the second stanza of which we felt captured exactly how we felt about each other. In the resulting composite text the lines from the first poem frame the excerpt from the second, a relation reflected in the music.

Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be!
I have but to be by thee, and thy hand
Will never let mine go, nor heart withstand
The beating of my heart to reach its place.
When shall I look for thee and feel thee gone?
When cry for the old comfort and find none?
Never, I know! Thy soul is in thy face.
Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be!