Praise they that will times past, I joy to see
My selfe now live: this age best pleaseth mee.

Praise they that will times past, I joy to see
My selfe now live: this age best pleaseth mee.

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?

I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes.

I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes.

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

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

O God! Put back Thy universe and give me yesterday.

O God! Put back Thy universe and give me yesterday.

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."

Therefore Agathon rightly says: "Of this alone even God is
deprived, the power of making things that are past read more

Therefore Agathon rightly says: "Of this alone even God is
deprived, the power of making things that are past never to have
been."

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.

Enjoy the spring of love and youth,
To some good angel leave the rest,
For time will read more

Enjoy the spring of love and youth,
To some good angel leave the rest,
For time will teach thee soon the truth,
"There are no birds in last year's nest."