| |
| NOW all the hosts are marching to the grave; | |
| The hosts are leaping from the edge of life | |
| In a cascade of souls to sorrowful death. | |
| |
| And I am just awakened from the tomb, | |
| And whither they are going, I have been | 5 |
| In timelessness laid by, in noiseless death. | |
| |
| Now, like a crocus in the autumn time, | |
| My soul comes lambent from the endless night | |
| Of death—a cyclamen, a crocus flower | |
| Of windy autumn when the winds all sweep | 10 |
| The hosts away to death, where heap on heap | |
| The dead are burning in the funeral wind. | |
| |
| Now, like a strange light breaking from the ground, | |
| I venture from the halls of shadowy death— | |
| A frail white gleam of resurrection. | 15 |
| |
| I know where they are going, all the lives | |
| That whirl and sweep like anxious leaves away | |
| To have no rest save in the utter night | |
| Of noiseless death; I know it well— | |
| The death they will attain to, where they go, | 20 |
| I, who have been, and now am risen again. | |
| |
| Now like a cyclamen, a crocus flower | |
| In autumn, like to a messenger come back | |
| From embassy in death, I issue forth | |
| Amid the autumn rushing red about | 25 |
| The bitter world, amid the smoke | |
| From burning fires of many smouldering lives | |
| All bitter and corroding to the grave. | |
| |
| If they would listen, I could tell them now | |
| The secret of the noiseless, utter grave, | 30 |
| The secret in the blind mouth of the worm. | |
| But on they go, like leaves within a wind, | |
| Scarlet and crimson and a rust of blood, | |
| Into the utter dark: they cannot hear. | |
| |
| So like a cyclamen, a crocus flower | 35 |
| I lift my inextinguishable flame | |
| Of immortality into the world, | |
| Of resurrection from the endless grave, | |
| Of sweet returning from the sleep of death. | |
| |
| And still against the dark and violent wind, | 40 |
| Against the scarlet and against the red | |
| And blood-brown flux of lives that sweep their way | |
| In hosts towards the everlasting night, | |
| I lift my little pure and lambent flame, | |
| Unquenchable of wind or hosts of death | 45 |
| Or storms of tears, or rage, or blackening rain | |
| Of full despair—I lift my tender flame | |
| Of pure and lambent hostage from the dead, | |
| Ambassador from halls of noiseless death, | |
| He who returns again from out the tomb | 50 |
| Dressed in the grace of immortality, | |
| A fragile stranger in the flux of lives | |
| That pour cascade-like down the blackening wind | |
| Of sheer oblivion. | |
| |
| Now like a cyclamen, a crocus flower | 55 |
| In putrid autumn issuing through the fall | |
| Of lives, I speak to all who cannot hear, | |
| I turn towards the bitter, blackening wind, | |
| I speak aloud to fleeting hosts of red | |
| And crimson and the blood-brown heaps of slain, | 60 |
| Just as a cyclamen or crocus flower | |
| Calls to the autumn, Resurrection! | |
| I speak with a vain mouth. | |
| |
| Yet is uplifted in me the pure beam | |
| Of immortality to kindle up | 65 |
| Another spring of yet another year, | |
| Folded as yet: and all the fallen leaves | |
| Sweep on to bitter, to corrosive death | |
| Against me, yet they cannot make extinct | |
| The perfect lambent flame which still goes up, | 70 |
| A tender gleam of immortality, | |
| To start the glory of another year, | |
| Another epoch in another year, | |
| Another triumph on the face of earth, | |
| Another race, another speech among | 75 |
| The multitudinous people unfused, | |
| Unborn and unproduced, yet to be born. | |
| |
