| |
| WHEN the white flame in us is gone, | |
| And we that lost the world’s delight | |
| Stiffen in darkness, left alone | |
| To crumble in our separate night; | |
| |
| When your swift hair is quiet in death, | 5 |
| And through the lips corruption thrust | |
| Has still’d the labour of my breath— | |
| When we are dust, when we are dust!— | |
| |
| Not dead, not undesirous yet, | |
| Still sentient, still unsatisfied, | 10 |
| We’ll ride the air, and shine, and flit, | |
| Around the places where we died, | |
| |
| And dance as dust before the sun, | |
| And light of foot and unconfined, | |
| Hurry from road to road, and run | 15 |
| About the errands of the wind. | |
| |
| And every mote, on earth or air, | |
| Will speed and gleam, down later days, | |
| And like a secret pilgrim fare | |
| By eager and invisible ways, | 20 |
| |
| Nor ever rest, nor ever lie, | |
| Till, beyond thinking, out of view, | |
| One mote of all the dust that ’s I | |
| Shall meet one atom that was you. | |
| |
| Then in some garden hush’d from wind, | 25 |
| Warm in a sunset’s afterglow, | |
| The lovers in the flowers will find | |
| A sweet and strange unquiet grow | |
| |
| Upon the peace; and, past desiring, | |
| So high a beauty in the air, | 30 |
| And such a light, and such a quiring, | |
| And such a radiant ecstasy there, | |
| |
| They’ll know not if it ’s fire, or dew, | |
| Or out of earth, or in the height, | |
| Singing, or flame, or scent, or hue, | 35 |
| Or two that pass, in light, to light, | |
| |
| Out of the garden, higher, higher…. | |
| But in that instant they shall learn | |
| The shattering ecstasy of our fire, | |
| And the weak passionless hearts will burn | 40 |
| |
| And faint in that amazing glow, | |
| Until the darkness close above; | |
| And they will know—poor fools, they’ll know!— | |
| One moment, what it is to love. | |
| |
