The years pass like clouds
And leave me here alone;
The world has forgotten me;
Then you stepped toward me miraculously
When, to the rustling of the forest,
I stood here lost in thought.
— Joseph von Eichendorff
The years pass like clouds— Joseph von Eichendorff
Oh, dread of life streaming from the living flesh with which the bones are clothed, softness of the skin spread and stretched over it, dreadful warning of the skeleton and the many-ribbed breast frame which he can now embrace and which, breathing, now presses against him, heart beating against his.— Hermann Broch, The Romantic
When the world turns into a dark dungeon
And hope like a bat batters the walls with timid wings
Butting its head against the rotten ceiling
When the rain descends like prison bars
And a silent horde of horrid spiders
Spin webs deep within my brain
— Charles Baudelaire