But all has passed, the tune has died away, The glamour gone, the glory; is it chance? Is the unfeeling mud stabbed by a ray Cast by an unseen splendour’s great advance? Or does the glory gather crumb by crumb Unseen, within, as coral islands rise, Till suddenly the apparitions come Above the surface, looking at the skies? Or does sweet Beauty dwell in lovely things Scattering the holy hintings of her name In women, in dear friends, in flowers, in springs, In the brook’s voice, for us to catch the same? Or is it we who are Beauty, we who ask? We by whose gleams the world fulfils its task. These myriad days, these many thousand hours, A man’s long life, so choked with dusty things, How little perfect poise with perfect powers, Joy at the heart and Beauty at the springs. One hour, or two, or three, in long years scattered Sparks from a smithy that have fired a thatch, Are all that life has given and all that mattered; The rest, all heaving at a moveless latch. For these, so many years of useless toil, Despair, endeavour, and again despair, Sweat, that the base machine may have its oil, Idle delight to tempt one everywhere. A life upon the cross. To make amends, Three flaming memories that the deathbed ends. There, on the darkened deathbed, dies the brain That flared three several times in seventy years. It cannot lift the silly hand again, Nor speak, nor sing, it neither sees nor hears; And muffled mourners put it in the ground And then go home, and in the earth it lies Too dark for vision and too deep for sound, The million cells that made a good man wise. Yet for a few short years an influence stirs, A sense or wraith or essence of him dead, Which makes insensate things its ministers To those beloved, his spirit’s daily bread; Then that, too, fades; in book or deed a spark Lingers, then that, too, fades; then all is dark. So in the empty sky the stars appear, Are bright in heaven marching through the sky, Spinning their planets, each one to his year, Tossing their fiery hair until they die; Then in the tower afar the watcher sees The sun, that burned, less noble than it was, Less noble still, until by dim degrees No spark of him is specklike in his glass. Then blind and dark in heaven the sun proceeds, Vast, dead and hideous, knocking on his moons, Till crashing on his like creation breeds, Striking such life, a constellation swoons; From dead things striking fire a new sun springs, New fire, new life, new planets with new wings.