The hills remain; they lift their brows
Against the splendour of the skies;
The dawn a paler crimson grows,
Each night the purple sunlight dies.
The sea still rolls to Homer's song,
The clouds re-shape themselves and flow;
The voices of the wind are strong,
They come and pass unseen, and go.
Spring with a new life round her feet,
A thousand buds to shape are blown;
And Summer with her perfect heat,
Completing all she smiles upon.
Autumn that bends her drooping brow,
And weaves dead leaves within her hair;
And Winter underneath the bough,
With all his snowflakes resting there.
The streams still flash from hill and glen,
They reach the rivers and are one;
They moan to reach the sea, as when
The Memnon murmured to the sun.
These still remain, but we, alas,
Who watch the changes day by day—
This doom is on us that we pass,
We only go a little way.