Where are my years? They've vanished past reclaim.
Has life been real for me, or just a dream?
The world I took for solid, was it so?
Perhaps I merely slept, and didn't know.
And now that I'm awake I've lost the strands
of what was once familiar as my hand.
My people, and the country where I grew,
my neighborhood — all strange, as if untrue.
The fields are burned, the forest has been felled,
my boyhood playmates have grown old and dull.
They greet me coldly who were gracious once;
the forms of courtesy are now affronts.
Were not the brooks still running as they were,
my frame of mind would be too much to bear.
I can recall so many joyous days
now blown away, like seafoam off the waves.
~