How Beautiful, If Sorrow Had

Through Buried Paths, Where Sleepy Twilight Dreams The Summer Time Away.

Thou Wast Not Born For Death, Immortal Bird! No Hungry Generations Tread Thee Down; The Voice I Hear This Passing Night Was Heard In Ancient Days By Emperor And Clown.

Let Us Open Our Leaves Like A Flower, And Be Passive And Receptive.

Bright Star, Would I Were Stedfast As Thou Art--- Not In Lone Splendour Hung Aloft The Night And Watching, With Eternal Lids Apart, Like Nature's Patient, Sleepless Eremite, The Moving Waters At Their Priestlike Task Of Pure Ablution Round Earth's Human Shores, Or Gazing On The New Soft-fallen Mask Of Snow Upon The Mountains And The Moors--- No---yet Still Stedfast, Still Unchangeable, Pillowed Upon My Fair Love's Ripening Breast, To Feel For Ever Its Soft Fall And Swell, Awake For Ever In A Sweet Unrest, Still, Still To Hear Her Tender-taken Breath, And So Live Ever---or Else Swoon In Death.

The Grandeur Of The Dooms We Have Imagined For The Mighty Dead.