To Daffodils

Jean Francois Millet

To Daffodils

Fair Daffodils, we weep to see

You haste away so soon;

As yet the early-rising sun

Has not attain'd his noon.

Stay, stay,

Until the hasting day

Has run

But to the even-song;

And, having pray'd together, we

Will go with you along.

We have short time to stay, as you,

We have as short a spring;

As quick a growth to meet decay,

As you, or anything.

We die

As your hours do, and dry

Away,

Like to the summer's rain;

Or as the pearls of morning's dew,

Ne'er to be found again. 

Robert Herrick

Why is it that beauty so often makes us think of loss? Is Time always stealing our joys? Is the fact that they are slipping away from us part of what makes them so precious? Sometimes I wish there were more poems about things that stay - "Stay! stay!" I do not want the beauty to fade. I want it to last.