And I say I will go there and die there: But I do not go there, and sometimes I think that the train could not carry me there, And it's possible, maybe, That it's farther than Asia or Africa, Or any voyager's harbour, Farther, farther, beyond recall.... O even in memory! EPITAPH IN OLD MODE The leaves fall gently on the grass, And all the willow trees and poplar trees and elder trees That bend above her where she sleeps, O all the willow trees, the willow trees Breathe sighs above her tomb. O pause and pity as you pass. She loved so tenderly, so quietly, so hopelessly; And sometimes comes one here and weeps-- She loved so tenderly, so tenderly, And never told them whom. SONNET There was an Indian, who had known no change, Who strayed content along a sunlit beach Gathering shells. He heard a sudden strange Commingled noise: looked up; and gasped for speech. For in the bay, where nothing was before, Moved on the sea, by magic, huge canoes, With bellying cloths on poles, and not one oar, And fluttering coloured signs and clambering crews. And he, in fear, this naked man alone, His fallen hands forgetting all their shells, His lips gone pale, knelt low behind a stone, And stared, and saw, and did not understand, Columbus's doom-burdened caravels Slant to the shore, and all their seamen land. THE BIRDS Within mankind's duration, so they say, Khephren and Ninus lived but yesterday. Asia had no name till man was old And long had learned the use of iron and gold; And aeons had passed, when the first corn was planted, Since first the use of syllables was granted. Men were on earth while climates slowly swung, Fanning wide zones to heat and cold, and long Subsidence turned great continents to sea, And seas dried up, dried up interminably, Age after age; enormous seas were dried Amid wastes of land. And the last monsters died. Earth wore another face. O since that prime Man with how many works has sprinkled time! Hammering, hewing, digging tunnels, roads; Building ships, temples, multiform abodes. How, for his body's appetites, his toils Have conquered all earth's products, all her soils; And in what thousand thousand shapes of art He has tried to find a language for his heart! Never at rest, never content or tired: Insatiate wanderer, marvellously fired, Most grandly piling and piling into the air Stones that will topple or arch he knows not where. And yet did I, this spring, think it more strange, More grand, more full of awe, than all that change, And lovely and sweet and touching unto tears, That through man's chronicled and unchronicled years, And even into that unguessable beyond The water-hen has nested by a pond, Weaving dry flags, into a beaten floor, The one sure product of her only lore. Low on a ledge above the shadowed water Then, when she heard no men, as nature taught her, Plashing around with busy scarlet bill She built that nest, her nest, and builds it still.