What saw I then, what heard? Multitudes, multitudes, under the moon they stirred! The weaker brothers of our earthly breed; Watchmen of whom our safety takes no heed; Swift helpers of the wind that sowed the seed Before the first field was or any fruit; Warriors against the bivouac of the weed; Earth's earliest ploughmen for the tender root, All came about my head and at my feet A thousand, thousand sweet, With starry eyes not even raised to plead; Bewildered, driven, hiding, fluttering, mute! And I beheld and saw them one by one Pass and become as nothing in the night. Clothed on with red they were who once were white; Drooping, who once led armies to the sun, Of whom the lowly grass now topped the flight: In scarlet faint, who once were brave in brown; Climbers and builders of the silent town, Creepers and burrowers all in crimson dye, Winged mysteries of song that from the sky Once dashed long music down. O who would take away music from the earth? Have we so much? Or love upon the hearth? No more -- they faded; The great trees bending between birth and birth Sighed for them, and the night wind's hoarse rebuff Shouted the shame of which I was persuaded. Shall Nature's only pausing be by men invaded? Or shall we lay grief's fagots on her shoulders bare? Has she not borne enough? Soon will the mirroring woodland pools begin to con her, And her sad immemorial passion come upon her; Lo, would you add despair unto despair? Shall not the Spring be answer to her prayer? Must her uncomforted heavens overhead, Weeping, look down on tears and still behold Only wings broken or a fledgling dead, Or underfoot the meadows that wore gold Die, and the leaves go mourning to the mould Beneath poor dead and desperate feet Of folk who in next summer's meadows shall not meet? Who has not seen in the high gulf of light What, lower, was a bird, but now Is moored and altered quite Into an island of unshaded joy? To whom the mate below upon the bough Shouts once and brings him from his high employ. Yet speeding he forgot not of the cloud Where he from glory sprang and burned aloud, But took a little of the day, A little of the colored sky, And of the joy that would not stay He wove a song that cannot die. Then, then -- the unfathomable shame; The one last wrong arose from out the flame, The ravening hate that hated not was hurled Bidding the radiant love once more beware, Bringing one more loneliness on the world, And one more blindness in the unseen air. Nor may the smooth regret, the pitying oath Shed on such utter bitter any leaven. Only the pleading flowers that knew them both Hold all their bloody petals up to heaven.