And Death the while-- Death with his well-worn, lean, professional smile, Death in his threadbare working trim-- Comes to your bedside, unannounced and bland, And with expert, inevitable hand Feels at your windpipe, fingers you in the lung, Or flicks the clot well into the labouring heart: Thus signifying unto old and young, However hard of mouth or wild of whim, 'Tis time--'tis time by his ancient watch--to part With books and women and talk and drink and art: And you go humbly after him To a mean suburban lodging: on the way To what or where Not Death, who is old and very wise, can say: And you--how should you care So long as, unreclaimed of hell, The Wind-Fiend, the insufferable, Thus vicious and thus patient sits him down To the black job of burking London Town? IV _Allegro maestoso_ Spring winds that blow As over leagues of myrtle-blooms and may; Bevies of spring clouds trooping slow, Like matrons heavy-bosomed and aglow With the mild and placid pride of increase! Nay, What makes this insolent and comely stream Of appetence, this freshet of desire (Milk from the wild breasts of the wilful Day!), Down Piccadilly dance and murmur and gleam In genial wave on wave and gyre on gyre? Why does that nymph unparalleled splash and churn The wealth of her enchanted urn Till, over-billowing all between Her cheerful margents grey and living green, It floats and wanders, glittering and fleeing, An estuary of the joy of being? Why should the buxom leafage of the Park Touch to an ecstasy the act of seeing? --As if my paramour, my bride of brides, Lingering and flushed, mysteriously abides In some dim, eye-proof angle of odorous dark, Some smiling nook of green-and-golden shade, In the divine conviction robed and crowned The globe fulfils his immemorial round But as the marrying-place of all things made! There is no man, this deifying day, But feels the primal blessing in his blood. The sacred impulse of the May Brightening like sex made sunshine through her veins, There is no woman but disdains To vail the ensigns of her womanhood. None but, rejoicing, flaunts them as she goes, Bounteous in looks of her delicious best, On her inviolable quest: These with their hopes, with their sweet secrets those, But all desirable and frankly fair, As each were keeping some most prosperous tryst, And in the knowledge went imparadised. For look! a magical influence everywhere, Look how the liberal and transfiguring air Washes this inn of memorable meetings, This centre of ravishments and gracious greetings, Till, through its jocund loveliness of length A tidal-race of lust from shore to shore, A brimming reach of beauty met with strength, It shines and sounds like some miraculous dream, Some vision multitudinous and agleam, Of happiness as it shall be evermore!