"From our birthday, until we die, is but the winking of an eye"

 

While still I may, I write for you

The love I lived, the dream I knew.

From our birthday, until we die,

Is but the winking of an eye;

And we, our singing and our love,

What measurer Time has lit above,

And all benighted things that go

About my table to and fro,

Are passing on to where may be,

In truth's consuming ecstasy,

No place for love and dream at all;

For God goes by with white footfall.

I cast my heart into my rhymes,

That you, in the dim coming times,

May know how my heart went with them

After the red-rose-bordered hem.

Uit het gedicht 'To Ireland in the Coming Times' van de Ierse dichter W.B. Yeats (1865 - 1939). Lees het volledige gedicht bij the Poetry Foundation.