University of Virginia Library

Who makes an Eden must set you in it,
And who hath stars of crystal brimmed and bright,
Planets of rose,
Or moons of amber lit
From lordly lending suns of chrysolite,
And beautiful as those
That ache to furious Saturn.
For you are silver dawns
And silver rain
And silver snows:
And the prodigious night
Of balms and dews and darknesses and dreams
And trancèd forests and enchanted streams,
And unimaginable lawns,
And unlatched lattices
(Enlamped and tinkling)
Suddenly shut-to,
And snaring silences:
Eternally for you
The age-young seas are blue
And the great peaks rose-white.
The nightingale
Which doth the world assail
Athrob with old immitigable pain
And music past her wit,
And ambushed in the cedars, spilleth no note
Or fret or flurry or strain
Or magical sweet pattern
That is not yours;
Neither shall she, the minstrel, who doth sit
Poisèd in extreme height
And propped by April azures,
So to fling
The noise of her aspiring
At angel feet
And on immortal floors.

You know the men and women who are dead
Each by his name and each by her dim name,
And you do count them as you count spent roses
From the first down
And till the last one closes:
Time-which-hath-been, and cannot be, hath spread
Beside the river of Time-which-is, a town
Of echoless dwelling-places where inhabit
Shadows that shine or bleed
And creep and climb and falter and are sped,
And are yet shadows, and shall never know
More than they knew,
And never more may say
More than they said,
And yours is their imperishable joy
And yours their woe,
And on your head
Fall ruth and rapture:
You are both quick and dead,
While they,
Whom luring life never again shall capture,
Are only dead.

There was a maid who had just heard of love,
And an old man who had forgotten lust,
A barren wife whose heart was motherhood,
A wanton who could think on naught but good;
A thief who still
Had honour, and a liar
To whom his lie
Was whip and fire
And an abhorr'd
And grievous uttering:
I heard a bride say in the night
The world is builded on delight,
I saw the murderer adore a sky
Of summer and without fleck
What time the hangman grabbled at his neck:
They told me of a princess who had thrown
From her sweet state, hot kisses to the dust,
And of a peacock lord
Who darkly understood
He was a clown,
And of a clown who surely was a king
But minded apes.
All loveliness, all ill,
All innocence, all ruin and all dread,
All glory and all disgrace
Lifted themselves like ghosts,
In infinite multitude,
Innumerable hosts;
And all these shapes
Were yours,
And they had looks like flowers
And manifold soft graces,
And ever in their faces
I could trace,
Somewhere, your face.

O secret, consecrate
Inviolable spirit, elate
And amorous and proud
With blanchèd plumes that shroud
And glitteringly conceal
The flame, and the vermeil
And whiteness not for sight,
Who to this garden of tears
And the enthronèd spheres
Art essence and breath and light;
Who blessest for the blest
And for the lowliest,
And standest on heaven's rim
Out-staturing seraphim,
And sittest by poor men's fires
And givest to the wicked their desires,
And whom to gaze upon
That which is done is done
For ever, and shall be
Unto eternity;
In the translated clay
Bathed out of Paphia,
In love and laughter and might
And the seven souls of right
And seventy souls of wrong,
In birth and sorrow and song
And terror and despair,
And all things fine and fair
Whether of gold or green,
The wonder have I seen,
The immanence flashing by,
And, slain with it, I die!