• I thought once how Theocritus had sung
    Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,
    Who each one in a gracious hand appears
    To bear a gift for mortals, old or young:
    And, as I mused it in his antique tongue,
    I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,
    The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,
    Those of my own life, who by turns had flung
    A shadow...