Before the beginning of yearsThere came to the making....

“ Before the beginning of yearsThere came to the making of manTime, with a gift of tears;Grief, with a glass that ran;Pleasure, with pain for leaven;Summer, with flowers that fell;Remembrance, fallen from heaven,And madness risen from hell;Strength without hands to smite;Love that endures for a breath;Night, the shadow of light,And Life, the shadow of death. ”

Algernon Charles Swinburne

From : Poems and Ballads Atalanta in Calydon