And yet, and yet--could this thing be?-- And in my soul I seemed to know, At once, this was a memory Of some past life, lived long ago.
Recorded by some secret sense, In forms that we as dreams retain; Some moment, as experience, Projects in pictures on the brain.
Come in, old Ghost of all that used to be!-- You find me old, And love grown cold, And fortune fled to younger company: Departed, as the glory of the day, With friends!--And you, it seems, have come to stay.-- 'T is time to pray.
Come; sit with me, here at Life's creaking door, All comfortless.-- Think, nay! then, guess, What was the one thing, eh? that made me poor?-- The love of beauty, that I could not bind? My dream of truth? or faith in humankind?-- But, never mind!
All are departed now, with love and youth, Whose stay was brief; And left but grief And gray regret--two jades, who tell the truth;-- Whose children--memories of things to be, And things that failed,--within my heart, ah me! Cry constantly.
None can turn time back, and no man delay Death when he knocks,-- What good are clocks, Or human hearts, to stay for us that day When at Life's creaking door we see his smile,-- Death's! at the door of this old House of Trial?-- Old Ghost, let's wait awhile.
This is the truth as I see it, my dear, Out in the wind and the rain: They who have nothing have little to fear,-- Nothing to lose or to gain. Here by the road at the end o' the year, Let us sit down and drink o' our beer, Happy-Go-Lucky and her cavalier, Out in the wind and the rain.
Now we are old, oh isn't it fine Out in the wind and the rain? Now we have nothing why snivel and whine?-- What would it bring us again?-- When I was young I took you like wine, Held you and kissed you and thought you divine-- Happy-Go-Lucky, the habit's still mine, Out in the wind and the rain.
Oh, my old Heart, what a life we have led, Out in the wind and the rain! How we have drunken and how we have fed! Nothing to lose or to gain!-- Cover the fire now; get we to bed. Long was the journey and far has it led: Come, let us sleep, lass, sleep like the dead, Out in the wind and the rain.
Night, they say, is no man's friend: And at night he met his end In the woods of Trebizend.