Recollections

I.     Years upon years, as a course of clouds that thicken     Thronging the ways of the wind that shifts and veers,     Pass, and the flames of remembered fires requicken     Years upon years.     Surely the thought in a man's heart hopes or fears     Now that forgetfulness needs must here have stricken     Anguish, and sweetened the sealed-up springs of tears.     Ah, but the strength of regrets that strain and sicken,     Yearning for love that the veil of death endears,     Slackens not wing for the wings of years that quicken     Years upon years. II.     Years upon years, and the flame of love's high altar     Trembles and sinks, and the sense of listening ears     Heeds not the sound that it heard of love's blithe psalter     Years upon years.     Only the sense of a heart that hearkens hears,     Louder than dreams that assail and doubts that palter,     Sorrow that slept and that wakes ere sundawn peers.     Wakes, that the heart may behold, and yet not falter,     Faces of children as stars unknown of, spheres     Seen but of love, that endures though all things alter,     Years upon years. III.     Years upon years, as a watch by night that passes,     Pass, and the light of their eyes is fire that sears     Slowly the hopes of the fruit that life amasses     Years upon years.     Pale as the glimmer of stars on moorland meres     Lighten the shadows reverberate from the glasses     Held in their hands as they pass among their peers.     Lights that are shadows, as ghosts on graveyard grasses,     Moving on paths that the moon of memory cheers,     Shew but as mists over cloudy mountain passes     Years upon years.