| I AM the spirit of all that lives, | |
| Labours and loses and forgives. | |
| My breath’s the wind among the reeds; | |
| I’m wounded when a birch-tree bleeds. | |
| I am the clay nest ’neath the eaves | 5 |
| And the young life wherewith it brims. | |
| The silver minnow where it swims | |
| Under a roof of lily-leaves | |
| Beats with my pulses; from my eyes | |
| The violet gathered amethyst. | 10 |
| I am the rose of winter skies, | |
| The moonlight conquering the mist. | |
| |
| I am the bird the falcon strikes; | |
| My strength is in the kestrel’s wing, | |
| My cruelty is in the shrikes. | 15 |
| My pity bids the dock-leaves grow | |
| Large, that a little child may know | |
| Where he shall heal the nettle’s sting. | |
| I am the snowdrop and the snow, | |
| Dead amber, and the living fit— | 20 |
| The corn-sheaf and the harvester. | |
| |
| My craft is breathed into the fox | |
| When, a red cub, he snarls and plays | |
| With his red vixen. Yea, I am | |
| The wolf, the hunter, and the lamb; | 25 |
| I am the slayer and the slain, | |
| The thought new-shapen in the brain. | |
| I am the ageless strength of rocks, | |
| The weakness that is all a grace, | |
| Being the weakness of a flower. | 30 |
| |
| The secret on the dead man’s face | |
| Written in his last living hour, | |
| The endless trouble of the seas | |
| That fret and struggle with the shore, | |
| Strive and are striven with evermore— | 35 |
| The changeless beauty that they wear | |
| Through all their changes—all of these | |
| Are mine. The brazen streets of hell | |
| I know, and heaven’s gold ways as well. | |
| Mortality, eternity, | 40 |
| Change, death, and life are mine—are me. | |
