They had not influenced his nature. Then had come Lord Henry Wotton with his strange panegyric on youth, his terrible warning of its brevity. That had stirred him at the time, and now, as he stood gazing at the shadow of his own loveliness, the full reality of the description flashed across him.
Basil Hallward's compliments had seemed to him to be merely the charming exaggerations of friendship
there will be purple stars on the clematis, and year after year the green night of its leaves will hold its purple stars. But we never get back our youth.