Classic Poem

Time, that anticipates eternities
And has an art to resurrect the rose;
Time, whose lost siren song at evening blows
With sun-flushed cloud shoreward on toppling seas;
Time, arched by planets lonely in the vast
Sadness that darkens with the fall of day;
Time, unexplored elysium; and the grey
Death-shadow'd pyramid that we name the past —
Magnanimous Time, patient with man's vain glory;
Ambition's road; Lethe's awaited guest;
Time, hearkener to the stumbling passionate story
Of human failure humanly confessed;
Time, on whose stair we dream our hopes of heaven,
Help us to judge ourselves, and so be shriven.