Farther Off From Heaven

When I was a kid growing up in a New Jersey suburb of New York City, I remember getting up in the mornings and going into the bathroom to watch my father shaving himself. It got to be a ritual. While shaving, Dad often recited a-poem that started out "I remember, I remember, the fir trees dark and high." It was about a man realizing that he was farther off from heaven than when he was a boy. I loved hearing my father recite the poem but was puzzled by the poet's view that he was farther off from heaven. It seemed to me that people got closer to heaven every day that they lived.