Ah, we are neither heaven nor earth, but men; Something that uses and despises both, That takes its earth’s contentment in the pen, Then sees the world’s injustice and is wroth, And flinging off youth’s happy promise, flies Up to some breach, despising earthly things, And, in contempt of hell and heaven, dies Rather than bear some yoke of priests or kings Our joys are not of heaven nor earth, but man’s, A woman’s beauty, or a child’s delight, The trembling blood when the discoverer scans The sought-for world, the guessed-at satellite; The ringing scene, the stone at point to blush For unborn men to look at and say “Hush.” Roses are beauty, but I never see Those blood drops from the burning heart of June Glowing like thought upon the living tree Without a pity that they die so soon, Die into petals, like those roses old, Those women, who were summer in men’s hearts Before the smile upon the Sphinx was cold Or sand had hid the Syrian and his arts. O myriad dust of beauty that lies thick Under our feet that not a single grain But stirred and moved in beauty and was quick For one brief moon and died nor lived again; But when the moon rose lay upon the grass Pasture to living beauty, life that was. Over the church’s door they moved a stone, And there, unguessed, forgotten, mortared up, Lay the priest’s cell where he had lived alone. There was his ashy hearth, his drinking cup, There was his window whence he saw the Host, The God whose beauty quickened bread and wine; The skeleton of a religion lost, The ghostless bones of what had been divine. O many a time the dusty masons come Knocking their trowels in the stony brain To cells where perished priests had once a home, Or where devout brows pressed the window pane, Watching the thing made God, the God whose bones Bind underground our soul’s foundation stones. O little self, within whose smallness lies All that man was, and is, and will become, Atom unseen that comprehends the skies And tells the tracks by which the planets roam; That, without moving, knows the joys of wings, The tiger’s strength, the eagle’s secrecy, And in the hovel can consort with kings, Or clothe a God with his own mystery. O with what darkness do we cloak thy light, What dusty folly gather thee for food, Thou who alone art knowledge and delight, The heavenly bread, the beautiful, the good. O living self, O God, O morning star, Give us thy light, forgive us what we are. I went into the fields, but you were there Waiting for me, so all the summer flowers Were only glimpses of your starry powers; Beautiful and inspired dust they were.