What A Haunting, Inescapable Riddle

After All, What Is Every Man? A Horde Of Ghosts - Like A Chinese Nest Of Boxes - Oaks That Were Acorns That Were Oaks. Death Lies Behind Us, Not In Front - In Our Ancestors, Back And Back Until.

The Sandy Cat By The Farmer's Chair Mews At His Knee For Dainty Fare; Old Rover In His Moss-greened House Mumbles A Bone, And Barks At A Mouse. In The Dewy Fields The Cattle Lie Chewing The Cud 'neath A Fading Sky; Dobbin At Manger Pulls His Hay: Gone Is Another Summer's Day.

We Wake And Whisper Awhile, But, The Day Gone By, Silence And Sleep Like Fields Of Amaranth Lie.

For Beauty With Sorrow Is A Burden Hard To Be Borne: The Evening Light On The Foam, And The Swans, There; That Music, Remote, Forlorn.

Very Old Are The Woods; And The Buds That Break Out Of The Brier's Boughs, When March Winds Wake, So Old With Their Beauty Are-- Oh, No Man Knows Through What Wild Centuries Roves Back The Rose.