Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TIME'S CHANGES, by WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TIME'S CHANGES, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: I saw her once - so freshly fair
Last Line: Whose wrecks in darkness swam before me!
Subject(s): Aging; Change


I SAW her once -- so freshly fair
That, like a blossom just unfolding,
She open'd to life's cloudless air;
And Nature joy'd to view its moulding:
Her smile it haunts my memory yet --
Her cheeks' fine hue divinely glowing --
Her rosebud mouth -- her eyes of jet --
Around on all their light bestowing:
Oh! who could look on such a form,
So nobly free, so softly tender,
And darkly dream that earthly storm
Should dim such sweet, delicious splendour!
For in her mien, and in her face,
And in her young step's fairy lightness,
Naught could the raptured gazer trace
But beauty's glow, and pleasure's brightness.

I saw her twice -- an alter'd charm --
But still of magic, richest, rarest,
Than girlhood's talisman less warm,
Though yet of earthly sights the fairest:
Upon her breast she held a child,
The very image of its mother;
Which ever to her smiling smiled,
They seem'd to live but in each other: --
But matron cares, or lurking wo,
Her thoughtless, sinless look had banish'd,
And from her cheek the roseate glow
Of girlhood's balmy morn had vanish'd;
Within her eyes, upon her brow,
Lay something softer, fonder, deeper,
As if in dreams some vision'd wo
Had broke the Elysium of the sleeper.

I saw her thrice -- Fate's dark decree
In widow's garments had array'd her,
Yet beautiful she seem'd to be,
As even my reveries portray'd her;
The glow, the glance had pass'd away,
The sunshine, and the sparkling glitter;
Still, though I noted pale decay,
The retrospect was scarcely bitter;
For, in their place a calmness dwelt,
Serene, subduing, soothing, holy;
In feeling which the bosom felt
That every louder mirth is folly --
A pensiveness, which is not grief,
A stillness -- as of sunset streaming --
A fairy glow on flower and leaf,
Till earth looks on like a landscape dreaming

A last time -- and unmoved she lay,
Beyond life's dim, uncertain river,
A glorious mould of fading clay,
From whence the spark had fled for ever!
I gazed -- my breast was like to burst --
And, as I thought of years departed,
The years wherein I saw her first,
When she, a girl, was tender-hearted --
And, when I mused on later days,
As moved she in her matron duty,
A happy mother, in the blaze
Of ripen'd hope, and sunny beauty --
I felt the chill -- I turn'd aside --
Bleak desolation's cloud came o'er me,
And being seem'd a troubled tide,
Whose wrecks in darkness swam before me!





Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!


Other Poems of Interest...
Home: PoetryExplorer.net