Old things of yesterday

That day the sky was cloudless; the wind blew softly where we sat. Above us stretched in its hugeness the vault and compass of the World; around us crowded in green newness the myriad tribes of Spring. Here chimed around us every music that can soothe the ear; was spread before us every color that can delight the eye. Yet we were sad. For it is so with all men: a little while (some by the fireside talking of homely matters with their friends, others by wild ecstasies of mystic thought swept far beyond the boundaries of carnal life) they may be easy and forget their doom. But soon their fancy strays; they grow dull and listless, for they are fallen to thinking that all these things which so mightily pleased them will in the space of a nod be old things of yesterday.

-- Wang Hsi-Chi (A. D. 353)
from the epigraph to A Short History of Opera, by Donald Jay Grout