Life and Existence

What made us dream that he could comb gray hair?

Unwearied still, lover by lover, They paddle in the cold Companionable streams or climb the air; Their hearts have not grown old.

We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.

Be secret and exult, Because of all things known That is most difficult.

The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.

In dreams begins responsibility. 4

Though leaves are many, the root is one; Through all the lying days of my youth I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun; Now I may wither into the truth.

Wine comes in at the mouth And love comes in at the eye; That’s all we shall know for truth Before we grow old and die.

The friends that have it I do wrong When ever I remake a song Should know what issue is at stake, It is myself that I remake.

The friends that have it I do wrong When ever I remake a song Should know what issue is at stake, It is myself that I remake.

And God stands winding His lonely horn, And time and the world are ever in flight.

Where nobody gets old and godly and grave, Where nobody gets old and crafty and wise, Where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue.

When you are old and gray and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book. 3

How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

The years like great black oxen tread the world, And God the herdsman goads them on behind, And I am broken by their passing feet.

I could not look on Death, which being known, Men led me to him, blindfold and alone.

Oh, Adam was a gardener, and God who made him sees That half a proper gardener’s work is done upon his knees.

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch.

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same.

Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the Ranges— Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go!

For frantic boast and foolish word— Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord!

Lo, all our pomp of yesterday Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!

The tumult and the shouting dies; The captains and the kings depart.