O, to bring back the great Homeric time,
The simple manners and the deed sublime:
When the read more

O, to bring back the great Homeric time,
The simple manners and the deed sublime:
When the wise Wanderer, often foiled by Fate,
Through the long furrow drave the ploughshare straight.

I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes.

I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes.

But how carve way i' the life that lies before,
If bent on groaning ever for the past?

But how carve way i' the life that lies before,
If bent on groaning ever for the past?

The free world must now prove itself worthy of its own past.

The free world must now prove itself worthy of its own past.

Listen to the Water-Mill:
Through the live-long day
How the clicking of its wheel
read more

Listen to the Water-Mill:
Through the live-long day
How the clicking of its wheel
Wears the hours away!
Languidly the Autumn wind
Stirs the forest leaves,
From the field the reapers sing
Binding up their sheaves:
And a proverb haunts my mind
As a spell is cast,
"The mill cannot grind
With the water that is past."

The good of other times let people state;
I think it lucky I was born so late.
read more

The good of other times let people state;
I think it lucky I was born so late.
[Lat., Prisca juvent alios; ego me nunc denique natum Gratulor.]

Gone--glimmering through the dream of things that were.

Gone--glimmering through the dream of things that were.

The next day is never so good as the day before.

The next day is never so good as the day before.

The past always looks better than it was; it's only pleasant because it isn't here.

The past always looks better than it was; it's only pleasant because it isn't here.