THERE is no length of days But yours, boys who were children once. Of old The Past beset you in your childish ways, With sense of Time untold. What have you then forgone? A history? This you had. Or memories? These, too, you had of your far-distant dawn. No further dawn seems his, The old man who shares with you, But has no more, no more. Time's mystery Did once for him the most that it can do; He has had infancy. And all his dreams, and all His loves for mighty Nature, sweet and few, Are but the dwindling past he can recall Of what his childhood knew. He counts not any more His brief, his present years. But O he knows How far apart the summers were of yore, How far apart the snows. Therefore be satisfied; Long life is in your treasury ere you fall; Yes, and first love, like Dante's. O a bride For ever mystical! Irrevocable good, -- You dead, and now about, so young, to die, -- Your childhood was; there Space, there Multitude, There dwelt Antiquity. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SWEET CLOVER by EDGAR LEE MASTERS ODE ON THE DEATH OF A FAVOURITE CAT, DROWNED IN A TUB by THOMAS GRAY BOSTON COMMON: 1774 by OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES TO LUCASTA, [ON] GOING BEYOND THE SEAS by RICHARD LOVELACE THE CHARACTER OF HOLLAND by ANDREW MARVELL THE SORROW OF LOVE (1) by WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS I GREET THEE by JOHANNA AMBROSIUS THE IMPROVISATORE: RODOLPH THE WILD by THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES |