In Harbour
I.
Goodnight and goodbye to the life whose signs denote
As mourners clothed with regret for the life gone by;
To the waters of gloom whence winds of the dayspring float us Goodnight and goodbye.
A time is for mourning, a season for grief to sigh;
But were we not fools and blind, by day to devote
As thralls to the darkness, unseen of the sundawn's eye?
We have drunken of Lethe at length, we have eaten of lotus;
What hurts it us here that sorrows are born and die?
We have said to the dream that caressed and the dread that smote us Goodnight and goodbye.
II.
Outside of the port ye are moored in,
Close from the wind and at ease from the tide,
What sounds come swelling, what notes fall dying Outside?
They will not cease, they will not abide:
Voices of presage in darkness
Pass and return and relapse aside.
Ye see not, but hear ye not wild wings
To the future that wakes from the past that died?
Is grief still sleeping, is joy not sighing Outside?
Algernon Charles Swinburne
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