Past and Future

I hibernated in my past. 5

Come night, strike hour. Days go, I endure. 4

The learning and blundering people will live on. They will be tricked and sold and again sold And go back to the nourishing earth for rootholds.

I never dared to be radical when young For fear it would make me conservative when old.

And nothing to look backward to with pride, And nothing to look forward to with hope.

Poor Jim Jay Got stuck fast In Yesterday.

Much did I rage when young, Being by the world oppressed, But now with flattering tongue It speeds the parting guest.

And God stands winding His lonely horn, And time and the world are ever in flight.

It is found again. What? Eternity. It is the sea Gone with the sun. 11

I long for Europe of the ancient parapets. 8

Or ever the knightly years were gone With the old world to the grave, I was a King in Babylon And you were a Christian Slave.

We two kept house, the Past and I, The Past and I; Through all my tasks it hovered nigh, Leaving me never alone.

What of the faith and fire within us Men who march away Ere the barn cocks say Night is growing gray, Leaving all that here can win us.

Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me, Saying that now you are not as you were When you had changed from the one who was all to me, But as at first, when our day was fair.

Wandering between two worlds, one dead, The other powerless to be born.

Are ye too changed, ye hills? See, ’tis no foot of unfamiliar men Tonight from Oxford up your pathway strays! Here came I often, often, in old days— Thyrsis [Arthur Hugh Clough] and I; we still had Thyrsis then.

Still nursing the unconquerable hope, Still clutching the inviolable shade.

Thou waitest for the spark from heaven: and we, Light half-believers of our casual creeds, Who never deeply felt, nor clearly willed… Who hesitate and falter life away, And lose tomorrow the ground won today— Ah! do not we, wanderer! await it too?

Go, for they call you, Shepherd, from the hill.

The poor old Past, The Future’s slave.

The instant made eternity— And heaven just prove that I and she Ride, ride together, forever ride?

He said, “What’s time? Leave Now for dogs and apes! Man has Forever.”

Who knows but the world may end tonight?

I shot an arrow into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where.