Oh! weep not that our beauty wears Beneath the wings of Time; That age o'erclouds the brow with cares That once was raised sublime... But mourn the inward wreck we feel As hoary years depart, And Time's effacing fingers steal Young feelings from the heart!

The speaker urges the reader not to lament the outward, inevitable signs of aging—beauty fading, the brow clouded by care—because these are natural effects of “Time.” The deeper tragedy, the poem suggests, is internal: the gradual erosion of youthful sensibility, ardor, and emotional freshness (“young feelings”) as years pass. Time is personified as an artist of loss, with “effacing fingers” that rub away the heart’s earlier responsiveness. The passage thus shifts the focus from vanity and appearance to moral-psychological diminishment, framing aging as a spiritual and affective impoverishment rather than merely a physical decline.