The little robin hopping in the wood Draws friendship from you, the rapt nightingale Making the night a marvellous solitude, Only of you to darkness tells the tale. Kingfishers are but jewels on your dress, Dun deer that rove and timid rabbits shy Are but the hintings of your gentleness. Upon your wings the eagle climbs the sky. Fish that are shadows in the water pass With mystery from you, the purpled moth Dust from your kirtle on his broidery has, Out of your bounty every beauty flowth. For you are all, all fire, all living form, Marvel in man and glory in the worm. Though in life's streets the tempting shops have lured, Because all beauty, howsoever base, Is vision of you, marred, I have endured Tempted or fall'n, to look upon your face. Now through the grinning death's head in the paint, Within the tavern-song, hid in the wine, In many kinded man, emperor and saint, I see you pass, you breath of the divine. I see you pass, as centuries ago The long dead men with passionate spirit saw, O brother man, whom spirit habits so, Through your red sorrows Beauty keeps her law, Beauty herself, who takes your dying hand, To leave through Time the Memnon in the sand. When all these million cells that are my slaves Fall from my pourried ribs and leave me lone, A living speck among a world of graves, What shall I be, that spot in the unknown? A glow-worm in a night that floats the sun? Or deathless dust feeling the passer's foot? An eye undying mourning things undone? Or seed for quickening free from prisoning fruit? Or an eternal jewel on your robe, Caught to your heart, one with the April fire That made me yours as man upon the globe, One with the Spring, a breath in all desire, One with the primrose, present in all joy? Or pash that rots, which pismires can destroy? Let that which is to come be as it may, Darkness, extinction, justice, life intense, The flies are happy in the summer day, Flies will be happy many summers hence. Time with his antique breeds that built the Sphynx Time with her men to come whose wings will tower, Poured and will pour, not as the wise man thinks, But with blind force, to each his little hour. And when the hour has struck, comes death or change, Which, whether good or ill, we cannot tell, But the blind planet will wander through her range Bearing men like us who will serve as well. The sun will rise, the winds that ever move Will blow our dust that once were men in love. THE MADMAN'S SONG