Ravenous Time has flowers for his food in Autumn, yet can cleverly make good each petal: devours animals and men, but for ten dead he can create ten. If you enquire how secretly you've come to mansize from the smallness of a stone it will appear his effort made you rise so gradually to your proper size. But as he makes he eats; the very part where he began, even the elusive heart Time's ruminative tongue will wash and slow juice masticate all flesh. That volatile huge intestine holds material and abstract in its folds: thought and ambition melt and even the world will alter, in that catholic belly curled. But Time, who ate my love, you cannot make such another; you who can remake the lizard's tail and the bright snakeskin cannot, cannot. That you gobbled in too quick, and though you brought me from a boy you can make no more of me, only destroy. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE: 6 by ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING DIRGE OF RORY O'MORE; 1642 by AUBREY THOMAS DE VERE HAILSTORM IN MAY by GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS SONNET: 15. TO THE LORD GENERAL FAIRFAX by JOHN MILTON |