WHERE, oh where are the visions of morning, <br />Fresh as the dews of our prime? <br />Gone, like tenants that quit without warning, <br />Down the back entry of time. <br /> <br />Where, oh where are life's lilies and roses, <br />Nursed in the golden dawn's smile? <br />Dead as the bulrushes round little Moses, <br />On the old banks of the Nile. <br /> <br />Where are the Marys, and Anns, and Elizas, <br />Loving and lovely of yore? <br />Look in the columns of old Advertisers,-- <br />Married and dead by the score. <br /> <br />Where the gray colts and the ten-year-old fillies, <br />Saturday's triumph and joy? <br />Gone, like our friend (--Greek--) Achilles, <br />Homer's ferocious old boy. <br /> <br />Die-away dreams of ecstatic emotion, <br />Hopes like young eagles at play, <br />Vows of unheard-of and endless devotion, <br />How ye have faded away! <br /> <br />Yet, through the ebbing of Time's mighty river <br />Leave our young blossoms to die, <br />Let him roll smooth in his current forever, <br />Till the last pebble is dry.<br /><br />Oliver Wendell Holmes<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/questions-and-answers-12/
