--- The year has run <br />Its round of seasons, has fulfilled its course, <br />Absolved its destined period, and is borne, <br />Silent and swift, to that devouring gulf, <br />Their womb and grave, where seasons, months and years, <br />Revolving periods of uncounted time, <br />All merge, and are forgotten.—Thou alone, <br />In thy deep bosom burying all the past, <br />Still art; and still from thine exhaustless store <br />New periods spring, Eternity.—Thy name <br />Or glad, or fearful, we pronounce, as thoughts <br />Wandering in darkness shape thee. Thou strange being, <br />Which art and must be, yet which contradict'st <br />All sense, all reasoning,—thou, who never wast <br />Less than thyself, and who still art thyself <br />Entire, though the deep draught which Time has taken <br />Equals thy present store—No line can reach <br />To thy unfathomed depths. The reasoning sage <br />Who can dissect a sunbeam, count the stars, <br />And measure distant worlds, is here a child, <br />And, humbled, drops his calculating pen. <br />On and still onward flows the ceaseless tide, <br />And wrecks of empires and of worlds are borne <br />Like atoms on its bosom.—Still thou art <br />And he who does inhabit thee.<br /><br />Anna Laetitia Barbauld<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/eternity-85/
