SOMETIMES in some forsaken place, Hid from the aspect of the sun, We come on some forgotten trace Of life and years long dead and done. Some faded picture's doubtful truth, Fixed in the springtime of our days, Which through all change of mien portrays The evanescent charm of youth -- The rounded cheek, the wealth of hair, The bright young eye's unclouded blue. White head, wan face, were you thus fair? Sad eyes, and were these ever you? Changed, and yet still unchanged through change, The self-same lives for good or ill, Thin ghosts with features known, yet strange, Of us who live and travail still. Thin ghosts! or is it we who fade And are deceased, and keep no more Than some thin unsubstantial shade Of the young hopes and fears of yore? Who knows what Life, or Death, or Time Are in themselves, or whither tend The great world's footsteps slow, sublime, From what dim source -- to what hidden end? Or if our growth be but decay, Or if all Life must wax and grow, Or if no change true Being know, Though all things outward pass away? Ah! not in outward things we know The chiefest work of Time and Change; But new faiths come, old thoughts grown strange, Old longings which no more may glow. Some time-stained sheaf of youthful verse, Some inarticulate yearning dumb, Once dear, ere time and age had come To turn the better to the worse. In these the gazer starts to see A self, not his, reflected most, And asking, "Were these part of me?" Knows he has looked upon a ghost. |