Perhaps in chasms of the wasted past, That planet wandered within hail of ours, And plucked men's souls to loveliness and cast The old, that was, away, like husks of flowers; And made them stand erect and bade them build Nobler than hovels plaited in the mire, Gave them an altar and a God to gild, Bridled the brooks for them and fettered fire; And, in another coming, forged the steel Which, on life's scarlet wax, for ever set Longing for beauty bitten as a seal That blood not clogs nor centuries forget, That built Atlantis, and, in time, will raise That grander thing whose image haunts our days. LXIII. For, like an outcast from the city, I Wander the desert strewn with travellers' bones, Having no comrade but the starry sky Where the tuned planets ride their floating thrones. I pass old ruins where the kings caroused In cups long shards from vines long since decayed, I tread the broken brick where queens were housed In beauty's time ere beauty was betrayed, And in the ceaseless pitting of the sand On monolith and pyle, I see the dawn Making those skeletons of beauty grand By fire that comes as darkness is withdrawn, And, in that fire, the art of men to come Shines with such glow I bless my martyrdom. LXIV. Death lies in wait for you, you wild thing in the wood, Shy-footed beauty dear, half-seen, half-understood. Glimpsed in the beech-wood dim and in the dropping fir, Shy like a fawn and sweet and beauty's minister. Glimpsed as in flying clouds by night the little moon, A wonder, a delight, a paleness passing soon. Only a moment held, only an hour seen, Only an instant known in all that life has been, One instant in the sand to drink that gush of grace, The beauty of your way, the marvel of your face. Death lies in wait for you, but few short hours he gives; I perish even as you by whom all spirit lives. Come to me, spirit, come, and fill my hour of breath With hours of life in life that pay no toll to death. LXV. They called that broken hedge The Haunted Gate. Strange fires (they said) burnt there at moonless times. Evil was there, men never went there late, The darkness there was quick with threatened crimes. And then one digging in that bloodied clay Found, but a foot below, a rotted chest. Coins of the Romans, tray on rusted tray, Hurriedly heaped there by a digger prest. So that one knew how, centuries before, Some Roman flying from the sack by night, Digging in terror there to hide his store, Sweating his pick, by windy lantern light, Had stamped his anguish on that place's soul, So that it knew and could rehearse the whole. LXVI.