Flags that are vanished, flags that are soiled and furled, Say what will be the word when I am gone: What learned little acrid archive men Will burrow to find me out and burrow again,-- But all for naught, unless To find there was another Island.... Yes, There are too many islands in this world, There are too many rats, and there is too much rain. So three things are made plain Between the sea and sky: Three separate parts of one thing, which is Pain.... Bah, what a way to die!-- To leave my Queen still spinning there on high, Still wondering, I dare say, To see me in this way.... _Madame a sa tour monte Si haut qu’elle peut monter_-- Like one of our Commissioners ... _ai! ai!_ Prometheus and the women have to cry, But no, not I.... Faugh, what a way to die! But who are these that come and go Before me, shaking laurel as they pass? Laurel, to make me know For certain what they mean: That now my Fate, my Queen, Having found that she, by way of right reward, Will after madness go remembering, And laurel be as grass,-- Remembers the one thing That she has left to bring. The floor about me now is like a sward Grown royally. Now it is like a sea That heaves with laurel heavily, Surrendering an outworn enmity For what has come to be. --But not for _you_, No, not for you, returning with your curled And haggish lips. And why are you alone? Why do you stay when all the rest are gone? Why do you bring those treacherous eyes that reek With venom and hate the while you seek To make me understand?-- _Laurel from every land, Laurel, but not the world?_ Fury, or perjured Fate, or whatsoever, Tell me the bloodshot word that is your name And I will pledge remembrance of the same That shall be crossed out never; Whereby posterity May know, being told, that you have come to me, You and your tongueless train without a sound, With covetous hands and eyes and laurel all around, Foreshowing your endeavor To mirror me the demon of my days, To make me doubt him, loathe him, face to face. Bowed with unwilling glory from the quest That was ordained and manifest, You shake it off and wish me joy of it? _Laurel from every place, Laurel, but not the rest?_ Such are the words in you that I divine, Such are the words of men. So be it, and what then? Poor, tottering counterfeit, Are you a thing to tell me what is mine?