“Before the winter fire, I will still be dreaming, For who knows, where the time goes?” Sandy Denny

“They are not long, the days of wine and roses: Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for awhile, then closes Within a dream.” Ernest Dowson

Soon those of us in the Northern Hemisphere will be saying farewell to the summer and personally it’s a time when I become more retrospective than ever. “Where did they go?”, we often say of our youth, our good times etc with veiled reference to loss and the speed of the passage of time.

Rilke in these extracts from his The Duino Elegies summons the past with a heartfelt cry:

“Where are the days of Tobias, 
when one of you, veiling his radiance, stood at the front door, 
slightly disguised for the journey, no longer appalling;...

Oh where are the years when you simply repelled 
the surging void for him, with your slight form? 
You hid so much from him then: you made the suspect room 
harmless at night, from your heart filled with refuge…. 

Where, oh where is the place – I carry it in my heart –
where they were still far from capable, still fell away
from each other, like coupling animals, not yet
ready for pairing….”

And Tolkein evoked this Middle English motif of a lament in “The Two Towers”:

“Where now the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?
Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing? 
Where is the hand on the harpstring, and the red fire glowing? 
Where is the spring and the harvest and the tall corn growing? 
They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow; 
The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow. 
Who shall gather the smoke of the dead wood burning, 
Or behold the flowing years from the Sea returning?”

Norse sagas, Latin and Medieval poetry, love songs emote such questioning which has a name: ubi sunt (where are they) a term taken from the longer Latin phrase, Ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerunt (where are those who were before us)?

And our MTB prompt today is simply to use this Ubi Sunt motif in your poetry as such:

• title your poem with the question – where are the/they…
• use the questioning within your poem, even with repetition
• DO NOT ANSWER it though – the questioning is rhetorical
• employ concepts of mortality, the transience of life, a sense of nostalgia
• suggested themes: Childhood; Youth; Lost Generation; Days of Yore;
• employ whatever poetry style of your choosing from free verse to sonnet

Helpful Ubi Sunt poetry Links:
Explore the Ubi Sunt Anglo Saxon Motif
Where is the horse and rider?
Harvard Review: Ubi Sunt
Mark Strand: Where are the Waters of Childhood

Once you have immersed yourself in the feeling of Ubi Sunt, have written and posted your poem, according to the guidelines above, do add it to Mr Linky below then go visiting and reading other contributors as that is half the fun of our dVerse gatherings.
Please also TAG dVerse in your post, or include a link at the end of your poem that leads readers back to this dVerse prompt

[N.B. Mr Linky closes Saturday 3 p.m. EST]