Time, who with soft pale ashes veils the brand <br />Of many a hope that flared against the sky <br />To plant its heaven-storming banners high, <br />Has touched you with no desecrating hand; <br />Your beauty wins a ripeness sweet and bland <br />As opulent summer, and your glancing eye <br />Glows with a deeper lustre, and your sigh <br />Of love is still my clamouring heart's command. <br /> <br />Yet what if all your fairness were defaced, <br />Wilted by passionate whirlwinds, battle-scarred, <br />Your skin of delicate satin hard and dry? <br />Still you would be the laughing girl who graced <br />A gloomy manhood, by forebodings marred, <br />In the deep wood where still we love to lie.<br /><br />John Le Gay Brereton<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-touch-of-time/
