Quickly to be trampled then again by the feet of the returning tide?
Is it as the pale blue smoke, rising from a peasant's hovel,
That melted into limpid air, before it topped the larches?
Is it but a vision, unstable and unreal, which wise men soon forget?
Is it as the stranger of a night,—gone, we heed not whither?
Alas! thou foolish heart, whose thoughts are but as these,
Alas! deluded soul, that hopeth thus of Yesterday.
For, behold,—those temples of Ellora, the Brahmin's rock-built shrine,
Behold—yon granite cliff, which the North Sea buffeteth in vain,—
That stout old forest fir,—these waking verities of life,