Sonnets XXIX

All things are dying round us; days and hours,
A multitudinous troop, are passing on;
Winter is fled, and spring hath shed her flowers,
And summer's sun was shining, and hath shone;
Autumn was with us, but his work is done;
They all have flitted by, as doth a dream;
And we are verging onward. 'T is not so:
We name reality but as things seem,
And truth is hidden from our eyes below.
We live but in the dimness of a sleep:
Soon shall the veil be rent from certainty,
The spell of time be loosed from us, and we
Pass out from this incurved and fretful stream
Into the bosom of the tranquil deep.