Listen to the Water-Mill:
Through the live-long day
How the clicking of its wheel
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Listen to the Water-Mill:
Through the live-long day
How the clicking of its wheel
Wears the hours away!
Languidly the Autumn wind
Stirs the forest leaves,
From the field the reapers sing
Binding up their sheaves:
And a proverb haunts my mind
As a spell is cast,
"The mill cannot grind
With the water that is past."

Weep no more, lady, weep no more,
Thy sorrowe is in vaine,
For violets pluckt, the sweetest read more

Weep no more, lady, weep no more,
Thy sorrowe is in vaine,
For violets pluckt, the sweetest showers
Will ne'er make grow againe.

O, to bring back the great Homeric time,
The simple manners and the deed sublime:
When the read more

O, to bring back the great Homeric time,
The simple manners and the deed sublime:
When the wise Wanderer, often foiled by Fate,
Through the long furrow drave the ploughshare straight.

We can draw lessons from the past, but we cannot live in it.

We can draw lessons from the past, but we cannot live in it.

Thou unrelenting past.

Thou unrelenting past.

The good of other times let people state;
I think it lucky I was born so late.
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The good of other times let people state;
I think it lucky I was born so late.
[Lat., Prisca juvent alios; ego me nunc denique natum Gratulor.]

But how carve way i' the life that lies before,
If bent on groaning ever for the past?

But how carve way i' the life that lies before,
If bent on groaning ever for the past?

Every journey into the past is complicated by delusions, false memories, false namings of real events.

Every journey into the past is complicated by delusions, false memories, false namings of real events.

Praise they that will times past, I joy to see
My selfe now live: this age best pleaseth mee.

Praise they that will times past, I joy to see
My selfe now live: this age best pleaseth mee.