Lord, give to me who are old and rougher
The things that little children suffer,
And let keep bright and undefiled
The young years of the little child.
What am I, Life? A thing of watery salt Held in cohesion by unresting cells, Which work they know not why, which never halt, Myself unwitting where their Master dwells?
God dropped a spark down into everyone, And if we find and fan it to a blaze, It'll spring up and glow, like--like the sun, And light the wandering out of stony ways.
Man cannot call the brimming instant back;
Time's an affair of instants spun to days;
If man must make an instant gold, or black,
Let him, he may; but Time must go his ways.
Life may be duller for an instant's blaze.
Life's an affair of instants spun to years,
Instants are only cause of all these tears.
Since the printing press came into being, poetry has ceased to be the delight of the whole community of man; it has become the amusement and delight of the few.
So shall I fight, so shall I tread,
In this long war beneath the stars;
So shall a glory wreathe my head,
So shall I faint and show the scars,
Until this case, this clogging mould,
Be smithied all to kingly gold.
All ye that pass by!
While we least think it he prepares his Mate.
Mate, and the King's pawn played, it never ceases,
Though all the earth is dust of taken pieces.
All the great things of life are swiftly done, Creation, death, and love the double gate. However much we dawdle in the sun We have to hurry at the touch of Fate.
So death obscures your gentle form, So memory strives to make the darkness bright; And, in that heap of rocks, your body lies, Part of the island till the planet ends, My gentle comrade, beautiful and wise, Part of this crag this bitter surge offends, While I, who pass, a little obscure thing, War with this force, and breathe, and am its king.