Blossom by blossom the spring begins.
Forget that I remember And dream that I forget.
Time stoops to no man's lure.
Life is the lust of a lamp for the light that is dark till the dawn of the day that we die.
There was a poor poet named Clough, Whom his friends all united to puff, But the public, though dull, Had not such a skull As belonged to believers in Clough.
For the crown of our life as it closes Is darkness, the fruit thereof dust; No thorns go as deep as a rose's, And love is more cruel than lust. Time turns the old days to derision, Our loves into corpses or wives; And marriage and death and division Make barren our lives.