Here we sit, and blind Desire
Plays his spinet in the shade.
How is it our fancies tire?
Why is it our hearts afraid,
Cower, as with trembling wing
'Neath the grey hawk Time that flies
Where the phantom colours cling
To the ever-fading skies?
Is it with all things but thus?
In our hearts when we were born
Young Desire laughed with us,
So, so old now and forlorn
As he sits, an eerie elf
In the wizard airs that stir,
With a man so like himself
And the ghost of what you were.