 | Fantasy and Passion |  |
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PERSPECTIVES.
How much in life we utterly forget!
How many pangs, how many smiles and tears!
What joy, what pain, what yearning, what regret
Lies lost within the oblivion of dead years!
How many pangs, how many smiles and tears!
What joy, what pain, what yearning, what regret
Lies lost within the oblivion of dead years!
And journeying on, inexorably fast,
Accomplishing our fated length of days,
We turn to look upon the ample past,
Clothed bafflingly with indeterminate haze!
Accomplishing our fated length of days,
We turn to look upon the ample past,
Clothed bafflingly with indeterminate haze!
Its tracts of shadowy vagueness die away
To meet the shadowy sky-line of all thought;
Dreamily neutral, featurelessly gray,
They are not something, neither are they naught!
To meet the shadowy sky-line of all thought;
Dreamily neutral, featurelessly gray,
They are not something, neither are they naught!
But here and there, in such clear-seen relief
As scarce the annulling distance may efface,
We mark the rigid outline of some grief,
Like a great tree that overtops its race!
As scarce the annulling distance may efface,
We mark the rigid outline of some grief,
Like a great tree that overtops its race!
Or yet like quiet hills, not towering high,
Though proudly rounded, we discern, no less,
Joys that with beauteous dominance defy
These ghostly vapors of forgetfulness!
Though proudly rounded, we discern, no less,
Joys that with beauteous dominance defy
These ghostly vapors of forgetfulness!
But ah, how lovelier when our eyes have won,
August in retrospect as we recede,
Like some snow-crested mountain bathed in sun,
The pure firm grandeur of some noble deed!
August in retrospect as we recede,
Like some snow-crested mountain bathed in sun,
The pure firm grandeur of some noble deed!
| Fantasy and Passion | |