Volume I Part 91 (1/2)
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 pa.s.s, and think we see The earth's fixed surface flee:-- Alas, Time stays--we go!
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, I filled the woods with song 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, What backward Fate delays The hopes we used to know; Where are our old desires?-- Ah, where those vanished fires?
Time goes, you say?--ah no!
How far, how far, O sweet, The past behind our feet Lies in the even-glow!
Now, on the forward way, Let us fold hands, and pray; Alas, Time stays,--we go!
Austin Dobson [1840-1921]
AGE
Snow and stars, the same as ever In the days when I was young,-- But their silver song, ah never, Never now is sung!
Cold the stars are, cold the earth is, Everything is grim and cold!
Strange and drear the sound of mirth is-- Life and I are old!
William Winter [1836-1917]
OMNIA SOMNIA
Dawn drives the dreams away, yet some abide.
Once, in a tide of pale and sunless weather, I dreamed I wandered on a bare hillside, When suddenly the birds sang all together.
Still it was Winter, even in the dream; There was no leaf nor bud nor young gra.s.s springing; The skies shone cold above the frost-bound stream: It was not Spring, and yet the birds were singing.
Blackbird and thrush and plaintive willow-wren, Chaffinch and lark and linnet, all were calling; A golden web of music held me then, Innumerable voices, rising, falling.