'TWAS a lonely thought to mark the hours As they floated in light away, By the opening and the folding flowers, That laugh to the summer's day. Thus had each moment its own rich hue, And its graceful cup and bell In whose colored vase might sleep the dew, Like a pearl in an ocean-shell. To such sweet signs might the time have flowed In a golden current on, Ere from the garden, man's first abode, The glorious guests were gone. So might the days have been brightly told -- Those days of song and dreams -- When shepherds gathered their flocks of old By the blue Arcadian streams. So in those isles of delight, that rest Far off in a breezeless main, Which many a bark, with a weary quest, Has sought, but still in vain. Yet is not life, in its real flight, Marked thus -- even thus -- on earth, By the closing of one hope's delight, And another's gentle birth? Oh! let us live, so that flower by flower, Shutting in turn, may leave A lingering still for the sunset hour, A charm for the shaded eve. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...TOMMY [ATKINS] by RUDYARD KIPLING OUT OF THE HILLS by IRENE ARCHER AN ENGLISH SHELL by ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON EAST WIND by ABBIE FARWELL BROWN CIVILIZATION by E. P. BROWNING THE WANDERER: 5. IN HOLLAND: THE CASTLE OF KING MACBETH by EDWARD ROBERT BULWER-LYTTON TO CAROLINE (4) by GEORGE GORDON BYRON OBSERVATIONS IN THE ART OF ENGLISH POESY: 15. TROCHAIC VERSE: THE ELEVENTH EPIGRAM by THOMAS CAMPION |