Arlo Bates: Verses about Time

'Mid the seal-silt and the sea-sand,
Sinuous and sinister, fold on fold,
Sliding and winding tortuously,
Slips the sea-snake, weird and old;
Longing, with gleams of slumberous fire
In her dull eyes, and fierce desire
In her slow brain, for that far time
When, rising lotus-like from ooze and slime,
Her sinuate litheness changed to supple grace,
Her sibilance melted to witching speech,
She shall the heights of glorious being reach.
And lure her prey with woman's form and face.

Like to a coin, passing from hand to hand,
Are common memories, and day by day
The sharpness of their impress wears away.
But love's remembrances unspoiled with-stand
The touch of time, as in an antique land
Where some proud town old centuries did slay,
Intaglios buried lie, still in decay
Perfect and precious spite of grinding sand.
What fame or joy or sorrow has been ours,
What we have hoped or feared, we may forget.
The clearness of all memory time deflours,
Save that of love alone, persistent yet
Though sure oblivion all things else devours,
Its tracings firm as when they first were set.

The earliest flowers of spring
To thee, beloved, I bring:
Anemone and graceful adder's-tongue,
With golden cowslips, yellow as the sun
And fresh as brooks by which they sprung;
Sweet violets that we love; and, one by one,
The blossoms that come after,-cherry blossom
And snow of shad-bush, willful columbine
In pale red raiment, and the milky stars
Of chickweed-wintergreen; slim walnut buds
In satin sheen, and furry curling ferns,
Like owlets half awake; with floods
Of alder tassels that dropp dust of gold
On the dark pools where, 'twixt the bars
Of piercing sunbeams, speckled troutlings dart.
And thus until the jocund year is old
And frosts spin cerements, white and chill,
O'er all the woodlands, fold on fold,
I tell the days with flowers, to mind thee still
Who, kind to blossoms, to me cruel art,
How swift is time, how constant is my heart.