Lame falls the cry to kindle days Of radiant orb and daring gaze. It does but clank our mortal chain. For Earth reads through her felon old The many-numbered of her fold, Who forward tottering backward strain, And would be thieves of treasure spent, With their grey season soured. She could write out their history in their thirst To have again the much devoured, And be the bud at burst; In honey fancy join the flow, Where Youth swims on as once they went, All choiric for spontaneous glee Of active eager lungs and thews; They now bared roots beside the river bent; Whose privilege themselves to see; Their place in yonder tideway know; The current glass peruse; The depths intently sound; And sapped by each returning flood Accept for monitory nourishment Those worn roped features under crust of mud, Reflected in the silvery smooth around: Not less the branching and high singing tree, A home of nests, a landmark and a tent, Until their hour for losing hold on ground. Even such good harvest of the things that flee Earth offers her subjected, and they choose Rather of Bacchic Youth one beam to drink, And warm slow marrow with the sensual wink. So block they at her source the Mother of the Muse. Who cheerfully the little bird becomes, Without a fall, and pipes for peck at crumbs, May have her dolings to the lightest touch; As where some cripple muses by his crutch, Unwitting that the spirit in him sings: ‘When I had legs, then had I wings, As good as any born of eggs, To feed on all aërial things, When I had legs!’ And if not to embrace he sighs, She gives him breath of Youth awhile, Perspective of a breezy mile, Companionable hedgeways, lifting skies; Scenes where his nested dreams upon their hoard Brooded, or up to empyrean soared: Enough to link him with a dotted line. But cravings for an eagle’s flight, To top white peaks and serve wild wine Among the rosy undecayed, Bring only flash of shade From her full throbbing breast of day in night. By what they crave are they betrayed: And cavernous is that young dragon’s jaw, Crimson for all the fiery reptile saw In time now coveted, for teeth to flay, Once more consume, were Life recurrent May. They to their moment of drawn breath, Which is the life that makes the death, The death that makes ethereal life would bind: The death that breeds the spectre do they find. Darkness is wedded and the waste regrets Beating as dead leaves on a fitful gust, By souls no longer dowered to climb Beneath their pack of dust, Whom envy of a lustrous prime, Eclipsed while yet invoked, besets, And dooms to sink and water sable flowers, That never gladdened eye or loaded bee. Strain we the arms for Memory’s hours, We are the seized Persephone. Responsive never to the soft desire