Youth and Time

Once, I remember, the world was young;
The rills rejoiced with a silver tongue;
The field-lark sat in the wheat and sang;
The thrush’s shout in the woodland rang;
The cliffs and the perilous sands afar
Were softened to mist by the morning star;
For Youth was with me (I know it now!),
And a light shone out from his wreathèd brow.
He turned the fields to enchanted ground,
He touched the rains with a dreamy sound.

But alas, he vanished, and Time appeared,
The Spirit of Ages, old and weird.
He crushed and scattered my beamy wings;
He dragged me forth from the court of kings;
He gave me doubt and a bloom of beard,
This Spirit of Ages, old and weird.
The wonder went from the field of corn,
The glory died on the craggy horn;
And suddenly all was strange and gray,
And the rocks came out on the trodden way.

I hear no more the wild thrush sing:
He is silent now on the peach aswing.
Something is gone from the house of mirth--
Something is gone from the hills of Earth.
Time hurries me on with a wizard hand;
He turns the Earth to a homeless land;
He stays my life with a stingy breath,
And darkens its depths with foreknowledge of death;
Calls memories back on their path apace;
Sends desperate thoughts to the soul’s dim place.

Time murders our youth with his sorrow and sin,
And pushes us on to the windowless inn.