Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth/Time and Sentiment

by George Meredith

 

TIME AND SENTIMENT.

I see a fair young couple in a wood,
And as they go, one bends to take a flower,
That so may be embalmed their happy hour
And in another day, a kindred mood,
Haply together, or in solitude,
Recovered what the teeth of Time devour,
The joy, the bloom, and the illusive power,
Wherewith by their young blood they are endued
To move all enviable, framed in May,
And of an aspect sisterly with Truth:
Yet seek they with Time's laughing things to wed:
Who will be prompted on some pallid day
To lift the hueless flower and show that dead,
Even such, and by this token, is their youth.