Who is likely to forget Time, tread he never so still?
And Death, has he not ever his hand on the heart of a man?
Yet are they ever alert to leap out, to affright us,
From some lair amid commonplace things.
So now, when chance cast me up this old catalogue,
This frayed echo of echoes that sank into silence ten years ago
(Ten years ago-beyond the high wall of the war),
I was not curious to note the trend of ephemeral music,
Nor the names of the singers most popular then;
For straightway the voices of Time and Death lifted themselves in unison,
And my heart, recoiling, heard and quivered with the old intolerable pain,
Crying aloud for things that pass and shall not come again.
And so standing, with the lilacs a-bloom outside,
And hens clucking to chickens beneath my window,
And larks in towering song high in the sky,
All in the assurance of spring, all in the warm sunshine,
I knew, even so standing, with that tattered list
Crushed in my hand,
That it was impossible to trust lavish life,
With its largesse of youth,
Its resurgent laughter,
Crop after crop -
For it was intolerable to think of the lights and the laughter,
Of the faces, young, flushed, pretty, eager and silly,
Eager to vent and be vented,
Fading and going, growing old, dying down,
Like the grass withering, or the corn ripening,
Crop after crop -
And marguerites among the grass,
And crimson poppies in the corn.