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About this quote

What does it mean?
The speaker laments the loss of youth and love, recognizing that time moves forward regardless of human desire or pain.
In plain terms
He wishes youth and love could return, but time keeps moving without caring about their wishes.
What can you take from it?
Time does not wait for our desires to return to the past.

Where it applies

  • looking back on the past
  • missing a loved one
  • aging

Putting it to work

  • accepting change
  • living in the present
  • cherishing moments

Questions to consider

  • How do you cope with time passing?
  • What would you ask time if it could hear you?

Another view

It presents time as purely unheeding without acknowledging human agency in shaping the future.

More from Conrad Aiken

  1. All lovely things will have an ending, All lovely things will fade and die, And youth, that's now so bravely spending, Will beg a penny by and by.

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  2. The wandering one, the inquisitive dreamer of dreams, The eternal asker of answers, stands in the street, And lifts his palms for the first cold ghost of rain.

    Permalink to quote #12
  3. O sweet clean earth, from whom the green blade cometh! When we are dead, my best beloved and I, Close well above us, that we may rest forever, Sending up grass…

    Permalink to quote #9

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