Time Passes

Time Passes written by Walter de la Mare

The Listeners and Other Poems (1912)

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    There was nought in the Valley
    But a Tower of Ivory,
Its base enwreathed with red
    Flowers that at evening
    Caught the sun's crimson
As to Ocean low he sped.

    Lucent and lovely
    It stood in the morning
Under a trackless hill;
    With snows eternal
    Muffling its summit,
And silence ineffable.

    Sighing of solitude
    Winds from the cold heights
Haunted its yellowing stone;
    At noon its shadow
    Stretched athwart cedars
    Whence every bird was flown.

    Its stair was broken,
    Its starlit walls were
Fretted; its flowers shone
    Wide at the portal,
    Full-blown and fading,
Their last faint fragrance gone.

    And on high in its lantern
    A shape of the living
Watched o'er a shoreless sea,
    From a Tower rotting
    With age and weakness,
    Once lovely as ivory.

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