Past and Future

The age of chivalry is gone.—That of sophisters, economists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever.

When earth breaks up and heaven expands,

Hear the voice of the Bard!

The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause.

Perhaps my best years are gone … but I wouldn’t want them back. Not with the fire that’s in me now.

Ancient times were the youth of the world.

Man is a history-making creature who can neither repeat his past nor leave it behind.

Time that with this strange excuse

Wandering between two worlds, one dead,

‘We are always doing’, says he, ‘something for Posterity, but I would fain see Posterity do something for us.’

There are two days in the year when we cannot do anything: yesterday and tomorrow.

Birth and death are not two different states, but they are different aspects of the same state. There is as little reason to deplore the one as there is to be pleased about the other.

You start out with one thing, end up with another, and nothing’s like it used to be, not even the future.

How does it feel To be on your own With no direction home Like a complete unknown Like a rolling stone?

But I was so much older then I’m younger than that now.

I came to see the damage that was done and the treasures that prevail. I stroke the beam of my lamp slowly along the flank of something more permanent than fish or weed.

I came to explore the wreck.

I wanted to be sure to reach you; though my ship was on the way it got caught in some moorings. I am always tying up and then deciding to depart.

You were saved because you were the first. You were saved because you were the last. Alone. With others. On the right. On the left. Because it was raining. Because of the shade. Because the day was sunny.

Give me your arm, old toad; Help me down Cemetery Road.

May the gentle mountains and the bells of the flocks Remind us of everything we have lost, For we have seen on our way and fallen in love With the world that will pass in a twinkling.

In the uncertain hour before the morning Near the ending of interminable night At the recurrent end of the unending After the dark dove with the flickering tongue Had passed below the horizon of his homing.

Here I am, an old man in a dry month, Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain.

Lend me the stone strength of the past and I will lend you The wings of the future, for I have them.