Life and Existence

So careful of the type she seems, So careless of the single life.

 

Do we indeed desire the dead Should still be near us at our side?

 

Do we indeed desire the dead Should still be near us at our side?

 

And Time, a maniac scattering dust, And Life, a Fury slinging flame.

 

And Time, a maniac scattering dust, And Life, a Fury slinging flame.

 

How fares it with the happy dead?

 

I do but sing because I must, And pipe but as the linnets sing.

 

And from his ashes may be made The violet of his native land.

 

Let knowledge grow from more to more, But more of reverence in us dwell; That mind and soul, according well, May make one music as before.

 

Believing where we cannot prove.

 

Our little systems have their day.

 

Ask me no more: thy fate and mine are seal’d: I strove against the stream and all in vain: Let the great river take me to the main: No more, dear love, for at a touch I yield; Ask me no more.

 

Dear as remember’d kisses after death, And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign’d On lips that are for others; deep as love, Deep as first love, and wild with all regret; O Death in Life, the days that are no more.

 

Let the great world spin forever down the ringing grooves of change.

 

Let the great world spin forever down the ringing grooves of change.

 

Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.

 

And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapp’d in universal law.

 

Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs, And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.

 

Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs, And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.

 

This is the truth the poet sings, That a sorrow’s crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.

 

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

 

The deep Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, ’Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows, for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down; It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

 

The deep Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, ’Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows, for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down; It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

 

Death closes all: but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with gods.