Change & decay

The gloomful sense of transience and mortality is something that tends to settle darkly upon the soul in 'middle age'. It is probably intensified by living in a place such as Beijing, where there is such an unusually high rate of 'churn' amongst one's friends.

Then was it coincidence or some kind of subconsciously targeted nostalgia that turned up in today's browsing this maudlin old classic from Charles Lamb?

The Old Familiar Faces

I have had playmates, I have had companions
In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days;
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

I have been laughing, I have been carousing,
Drinking late, sitting late, with my bosom cronies;
All, are are gone, the old familiar faces.

I loved a love once, fairest among women:
Closed are her doors on me, I must not see her -
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

I have a friend, a kinder friend has no man:
Like an ingrate, I left my friend abruptly;
Left him, to muse on the old familiar faces.

Ghost-like I paced round the haunts of my childhood,
Earth seem'd a desert I was bound to traverse,
Seeking to find the old familiar faces.

Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother,
Why wert not thou born in my father's dwelling?
So might we talk of the old familiar faces.

How some they have died, and some they have left me,
And some are taken from me; all are departed;
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

Charles Lamb (1775-1834)