These posts reminded me of a poem that i learned in my AP english class (which remains to this day the only class--and the only teacher--that i believe was worthwhile...), but for the life of me i cannot remember the title, the author, or even a line sufficient to googlize it. perhaps someone can help:
in a nutshell, it was spoken by a lover to his fair maiden, with several stanzas detailing the ways he'd love to spend a thousand years on each part of her body, but the final stanza basically says "but hey, we're short on time, so let's get to the meat and potatoes".
the only thing that came to mind was "time is still a-flying", but it's not Herrick's work that i'm looking for.
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in response to Dylan, isn't it wonderful how for each and every perspective so effortlessly and artfully laid out before us, there's another offering a diametrically opposed point of view? i'll submit this, from one of my favorite poets:
The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.
To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder high-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.
Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay
And early though the laurel grows
It whithers quicker than the rose.
Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:
Now you will not swell the rout
of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.
So set, before its echos fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.
And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.
~AE Houseman
OTOH, i've always thought that he had his tongue firmly planted in cheek when he wrote this, so maybe it's not so different from _Do Not Go Gentle_ after all.
