Slow figures in some live remorseless frieze, <br />The approaching days escapeless and unguessed, <br />With mask and shroud impenetrably dressed; <br />Time, whose inexorable destinies <br />Bear down upon us like impending seas; <br />And the huge presence of the world, at best <br />A sightless giant wandering without rest, <br />Aged and mad with many miseries. <br /> <br />The weight and measure of these things who knows? <br />Resting at times beside life's thought-swept stream, <br />Sobered and stunned with unexpected blows, <br />We scarcely hear the uproar; life doth seem, <br />Save for the certain nearness of its woes, <br />Vain and phantasmal as a sick man's dream.<br /><br />Archibald Lampman<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/despondency-2/
