Each greedy self, by consecrating lust, Desire pricking into sacrifice, Adds, in his way, some glory to the dust, Brings, to the light, some haze of Paradise, Hungers and thirsts for beauty; like the hound Snaps it, to eat alone; in secret keeps His miser's patch of consecrated ground Where beauty's corns are dug down to the deeps. So when disturbing death digs up our lives, Some little gleam among the broken soil May witness for us as the shovel rives The dirty heap of all our tiny toil; Some gleam of you may make the digger hold, Touched for an instant with the thought of gold. Time being an instant in eternity, Beauty above man's million years must see The heaped corrupted mass that had to die, The husk of man that set the glitter free; Now from those million bodies in the dark, Forgotten, rotten, part of fields or roads, The million gleam united makes a spark Which Beauty sees among her star abodes. And, from the bodies, comes a sigh, "Alas, We hated, fought and killed, as separate men; Now all is merged and we are in the grass, Our efforts merged, would we had known it then. All our lives' battle, all our spirits' dream, Nought in themselves, a clash which made a gleam." You will remember me in days to come With love, or pride, or pity, or contempt; So will my friends (not many friends, yet some) When this my life will be a dream out-dreamt; And one, remembering friendship by the fire, And one, remembering love time in the dark, And one, remembering unfulfilled desire, Will sigh, perhaps, yet be beside the mark; For this my body with its wandering ghost Is nothing solely but an empty grange, Dark in a night that owls inhabit most, Yet when the king rides by there comes a change; The windows gleam, the cresset's fiery hair Blasts the blown branch and beauty lodges there. They took the bloody body from the cross, They laid it in its niche and rolled the stone. One said, "Our blessed Master," one "His loss Ends us companions, we are left alone." And one, "I thought that Pilate would acquit Right to the last;" and one, "The sergeant took The trenching mall and drove the nails with it." One who was weeping went apart and shook. Then one, "He promised that in three short days He would return, oh God; but He is dead." And one, "What was it that He meant to raise? The Temple? No? What was it that He said? He said that He would build? That He would rise?" "No," answered one, "but come from Paradise."