MY DAYS

My days are but the tombs of buried hours;

Which tombs are hidden in the pilèd years;

But from the mounds there spring up many flowers,

Whose beauty well repays their cost of tears.

Time, like a sexton, pileth mould on mould,

Minutes on minutes till the tombs are high;

But from the dust there fall some grains of gold,

And the dead corpse leaves what will never die—

It may be but a thought, the nursling seed