Slow figures in some live remorseless frieze,
    The approaching days escapeless and unguessed,
    With mask and shroud impenetrably dressed;
    Time, whose inexorable destinies
    Bear down upon us like impending seas;
    And the huge presence of this world, at best
    A sightless giant wandering without rest,
    Agèd and mad with many miseries.

    The weight and measure of these things who knows?
    Resting at times beside life's thought-swept stream,
    Sobered and stunned with unexpected blows,
    We scarcely hear the uproar; life doth seem,
    Save for the certain nearness of its woes,
    Vain and phantasmal as a sick man's dream.

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