THE PARADOX OF TIME. (A VARIATION ON RONSARD.) "Le temps s'en va, le temps s'en va, ma dame! Las! le temps non: mais NOUS nous en allons!" TIME goes, you say? Ah no! Alas, Time stays, we go; Or else, were this not so, What need to chain the hours, For Youth were always ours? Time goes, you say? — ah no! Ours is the eyes' deceit Of men whose flying feet Lead through some landscape low; We pass, and think we see The earth's fixed surface flee: Once in the days of old, Your locks were curling gold, And mine had shamed the crow. Now, in the self-same stage, We've reached the silver age; Time goes, you say? — ah no! Once, when my voice was strong, To praise your "rose" and "snow My bird, that sang, is dead; Where are your roses fled? Alas, Time stays, we go ! See, in what traversed ways, The hopes we used to know; How far, how far, O Sweet, Lies in the even-glow ! Now, on the forward way, we go! TO A GREEK GIRL. WITH breath of thyme and bees that hum, Across the years you seem to come, Across the years with nymph-like head, Where'er you pass, where'er you go, I hear the pebbly rillet flow; Where'er you go, where'er you pass, - There comes a gladness on the grass; Blithe airs that blow from down and sea; How sweet with you on some green sod To watch across the stricken chords In vain, — in vain! The years divide: And see you only in my dreams; From under-lands of Memory, A dream of Form in days of Thought, A dream, a dream, Autonoë! |