I. <br /> <br />Years upon years, as a course of clouds that thicken <br />Thronging the ways of the wind that shifts and veers, <br />Pass, and the flames of remembered fires requicken <br /> Years upon years. <br /> <br />Surely the thought in a man's heart hopes or fears <br />Now that forgetfulness needs must here have stricken <br />Anguish, and sweetened the sealed-up springs of tears. <br /> <br />Ah, but the strength of regrets that strain and sicken, <br />Yearning for love that the veil of death endears, <br />Slackens not wing for the wings of years that quicken - <br /> Years upon years. <br /> <br />II. <br /> <br />Years upon years, and the flame of love's high altar <br />Trembles and sinks, and the sense of listening ears <br />Heeds not the sound that it heard of love's blithe psalter <br /> Years upon years. <br /> <br />Only the sense of a heart that hearkens hears, <br />Louder than dreams that assail and doubts that palter, <br />Sorrow that slept and that wakes ere sundawn peers. <br /> <br />Wakes, that the heart may behold, and yet not falter, <br />Faces of children as stars unknown of, spheres <br />Seen but of love, that endures though all things alter, <br /> Years upon years. <br /> <br />III. <br /> <br />Years upon years, as a watch by night that passes, <br />Pass, and the light of their eyes is fire that sears <br />Slowly the hopes of the fruit that life amasses <br /> Years upon years. <br /> <br />Pale as the glimmer of stars on moorland meres <br />Lighten the shadows reverberate from the glasses <br />Held in their hands as they pass among their peers. <br /> <br />Lights that are shadows, as ghosts on graveyard grasses, <br />Moving on paths that the moon of memory cheers, <br />Shew but as mists over cloudy mountain passes <br /> Years upon years.<br /><br />Algernon Charles Swinburne<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/recollections/
