We two kept house, the Past and I, The Past and I; I tended while it hovered nigh, Leaving me never alone. - Thomas Hardy

Life is an oasis which is submerged in the swirling waves of sorrows and agonies.

"I am sorry to shock you," she said. "But the moth eats the garment somewhat in five-and thirty years."

On a Fine Morning”
in Poems of the Past and the Present (1901)

WHENCE comes Solace? — Not from seeing
What is doing, suffering, being,
Not from noting Life’s conditions,
Nor from heeding Time’s monitions;
But in cleaving to the Dream,
And in gazing at the gleam
Whereby gray things golden seem.

This do I this heyday, holding
Shadows but as lights unfolding,
As no specious show this moment
With its iris-hued embowment;
But as nothing other than
Part of a benignant plan;
Proof that earth was made for man.