Classic Poem

Green are the hills as in far times forgotten.
But past them flows a river to the eastward
That journeys ever and that changes ever—
A ceaseless current.

The gifted and the great have known its windings,
And drifted with them past our farthest vision.
And good and evil and defeat and conquest
Down that stream vanish.

We, the old men, white-haired and full of leisure,
Quietly tend our little isle of waters,
Spending our days in the calm life of fishers
With the flood round us.

We look upon the silent moon of Autumn;
We feel the coolness of the Spring's light breezes;
And with a jar of gleeful wine between us
We meet together;

And all the past, gone down the eternal river,
And all the present, floating on its bosom,
Are to us but a pleasant tale remembered,
Told in the twilight.