Timeless.

O life of earth! O dying age!
I'm afraid no one will understand you
but the man with the helpless smile
of one who has lost himself.
Years following years steal something every day;
At last they steal us from ourselves away.
Time the devourer of everything.
Time the healer of wounds.
Time drives onward fast,
And in a little while our lips are dumb.
Let us alone. What is it that will last?
All things are taken from us, and become
Portions and parcels of the dreadful Past.
Thus times do shift, each thing his turn does hold;
New things succeed, as former things grow old.
Through winter-time we call on spring,
And through the spring on summer call,
And when abounding hedges ring
Declare that winter's best of all.
The years like great black oxen tread the world,
And God the herdsman goads them on behind,
And I am trampled by their passing feet.
The Sun came up upon the left,
Out of the sea came he!
And he shone bright, and on the right
Went down into the sea.
The long mechanic pacings to and fro,
The set gray life, and apathetic end.
The innocent and the beautiful
Have no enemy but time.
The bell strikes one. We take no note of time
But from its loss.
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Let the new faces play what tricks they will
In the old rooms; night can outbalance day,
Our shadows rove the garden gravel still,
The living seem more shadowy than they.
Ah! the clock is always slow;
It is later than you think.
I sit with my back to the future, watching
time pouring away into the past.