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C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

‘Oh, Time and Change’

By William Ernest Henley (1849–1903)

From ‘The Song of the Sword and Other Verses’

OH, Time and Change, they range and range

From sunshine round to thunder!

They glance and go as the great winds blow,

And the best of our dreams drive under;

For Time and Change estrange, estrange—

And now they have looked and seen us,

Oh we that were dear, we are all too near

With the thick of the world between us.

Oh, Death and Time, they chime and chime

Like bells at sunset falling!

They end the song, they right the wrong,

They set the old echoes calling;

For Death and Time bring on the prime

Of God’s own chosen weather,

And we lie in the peace of the Great Release

As once in the grass together.