05.05.2009, 18:50
PAST AND FUTURE.
In their unceasing round the seasons come;
Seed time, and harvest, flowers, and fruit, and snow ;
And still, whatever the month-led earth may show,
Time to the future points with many a gnome.
Telling old tales by the tide's ebbing foam,
Stand yet the fishers ; ere again they go
Onward over the flood; and ever so
Man looks, as double Janus in his Rome.
Now scans he the before, rather than after;
And as the present fleets, then first doth weigh
In a vain-balanced scale its tears or laughter :
Now, shunning still the unreturning day,
Of fancies on vague hopes a keen engrafter,
" To-morrow, ay to-morrow," he doth say.
In their unceasing round the seasons come;
Seed time, and harvest, flowers, and fruit, and snow ;
And still, whatever the month-led earth may show,
Time to the future points with many a gnome.
Telling old tales by the tide's ebbing foam,
Stand yet the fishers ; ere again they go
Onward over the flood; and ever so
Man looks, as double Janus in his Rome.
Now scans he the before, rather than after;
And as the present fleets, then first doth weigh
In a vain-balanced scale its tears or laughter :
Now, shunning still the unreturning day,
Of fancies on vague hopes a keen engrafter,
" To-morrow, ay to-morrow," he doth say.