I turn these leaves with thronging thoughts, and say, <br />Alas! how many friends of youth are dead; <br />How many visions of fair hope have fled, <br />Since first, my Muse, we met.--So speeds away <br />Life, and its shadows; yet we sit and sing, <br />Stretched in the noontide bower, as if the day <br />Declined not, and we yet might trill our lay <br />Beneath the pleasant morning's purple wing <br />That fans us; while aloft the gay clouds shine! <br />Oh, ere the coming of the long cold night, <br />Religion, may we bless thy purer light, <br />That still shall warm us, when the tints decline <br />O'er earth's dim hemisphere; and sad we gaze <br />On the vain visions of our passing days!<br /><br />William Lisle Bowles<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/retrospection-2/
