Time flies. In vain our prayers, our tears!
We cannot tempt him to delays;
Down to the past he bears the years,
And yet love stays.
Through changing task and varying dream
We hear the same refrain,
As one can hear a plaintive theme
Run through each strain.
Time flies. He steals our pulsing youth;
He robs us of our care-free days;
He takes away our trust and truth:
And yet love stays.
O Time! take love! When love is vain,
When all its best joys die—
When only its regrets remain—
Let love, too, fly.
TIME AND LOVE
CHANGE.
Changed? Yes, I will confess it—I have changed.
I do not love in the old fond way.
I am your friend still—time has not estranged
One kindly feeling of that vanished day.
But the bright glamour which made life a dream,
The rapture of that time, its sweet content,
Like visions of a sleeper's brain they seem—
And yet I cannot tell you how they went.
Why do you gaze with such accusing eyes
Upon me, dear? Is it so very strange
That hearts, like all things underneath God's skies
Should sometimes feel the influence of change?
The birds, the flowers, the foliage of the trees,
The stars which seem so fixed and so sublime,
Vast continents and the eternal seas—
All these do change with ever-changing time.