When this burning flesh Burns down in Time's slow fire to a glowing ash; When these lips have uttered The last word, and the ears' last echoes fluttered; And crumbled these firm bones As in the chemic air soft blackened stones; When all that was mortal made Owns its mortality, proud yet afraid;
Then when I stumble in The broad light, from this twilight weak and thin, What of me will change, What of that brightness will be new and strange? Shall I indeed endure New solitude in that high air and pure, Aching for these fingers On which my assurèd hand now shuts and lingers?
Now when I look back On manhood's and on childhood's far-stretched track, I see but a little child In a green sunny world-home; there enisled By another, cloudy world Of unsailed waters all around him curled, And he at home content With the small sky of wonders over him bent:--
Lonely, yet not alone Since all was friendly being all unknown; To-day yesterday forgetting, And never with to-morrow's sorrow fretting; Not seeing good from ill Since but to breathe and run and sleep was well; Asking nor fearing nought Since the body's nerves and veins held all his thought....
Such a child again shall I Stray in some valley of infinity, Where infinite finite seems And nothing more immortal than my dreams? Where earthly seasons play Still with their snows and blossoms and night and day, And no unsetting sun Brightens the white cloud and awakes the moon?
In such half-life's half-light To cloak with mortal an immortal sight? With uninformed desire, Shorn passion, gentle mind, contented fire, Ignorant love; to run But with the little journeys of the sun, And at evening sleep With birds and beasts, and stars rocked in the deep?
But maybe this man's mind Will leave not its maturity behind, And nothing will forget Of all that teased or eased it here, while yet A mortal dress it wore; And these quick-darting thoughts and probings sore More sharply then will turn; And lonelier and yet hungrier the heart burn.
O, I would not forget Earth is too rich, too dark, too sour, too sweet:-- Nor be divorcèd quite From the late tingling of the nerves' delight. Less I would never be Than the deep-graving years have made of me-- A memory, pulse, mind, Seed and harvest, a reaper and sower blind.