O Memory ! noble power ! thy reign is here.
Strange destiny, how thus, from age to age,
Doth man complain of that which he has lost.
Still do departed years, each in their turn,
Seem treasures of happiness gone by:
And while mind, joyful in its far advance,
Plunges amid the future, still the Soul
Seems to regret some other ancient home
To which it is drawn closer by the past.

The sands of time cannot be stopped. Years pass whether we will them or not... but we can remember. What has been lost may yet live in memories.

And the memories of all we have loved stay and come back to us in the evening of our life. They are not dead but sleep, and it is well to gather a treasure of them.

Recalling former years’ romances,
Recalling love that time enhances,
With tenderness, with not a care,
Alive, at liberty once more,
We drank, in mute intoxication,
The breath of the indulgent night!
Just as a sleepy convict might
Be carried from incarceration
Into a greenwood, so were we
Borne to our youth by reverie.

Time's the thief of memory

When age chills the blood, when our pleasures are past—
For years fleet away with the wings of the dove— The dearest remembrance will still be the last,
Our sweetest memorial the first kiss of love.

Nay, tho' our Atoms shou'd revolve by chance,
And matter leape into the former dance;
Tho' time our Life and motion cou'd restore,
And make our Bodies what they were before,
What gain to us wou'd all this bustle bring,
The new made man wou'd be another thing;
When once an interrupting pause is made,
That individual Being is decay'd.
We, who are dead and gone, shall bear no part
In all the pleasures, nor shall feel the smart,
Which to that other Mortal shall accrew,
Whom of our Matter Time shall mould anew.

years steal
Fire from the mind as vigour from the limb;
And life’s enchanted cup but sparkles near the brim.

... oh! love will last
When all that made it happiness is past,—
When all its hopes are as the glittering toys
Time present offers, time to come destroys,—

Joys too exquisite to last,
And yet more exquisite when past.

Ther days may come,/Ther days may go,/But still the light of Mem'ry weaves/Those gentle dreams/Of long ago

We forget our pleasures, we remember our sufferings

From the inheritance series book one Eragon.

Broom

The sands of time cannot be stopped years pass whether we will them or not, but we can remember.......what has been lost may yet live on in memories, that which you will hear is imperfect and fragmented yet treasure it for without you it does not exist.

A little longer, and we shall be in our true country, and our childhood's joys — those Sunday evenings, those outpourings of the heart — will be given back to us for ever!