of the things that flee
     Earth offers her subjected, and they choose
     Rather of Bacchic Youth one beam to drink,
     And warm slow marrow with the sensual wink. 
     So block they at her source the Mother of the Muse.

     Who cheerfully the little bird becomes,
     Without a fall, and pipes for peck at crumbs,
     May have her dolings to the lightest touch;
     As where some cripple muses by his crutch,
     Unwitting that the spirit in him sings: 
     ’When I had legs, then had I wings,
     As good as any born of eggs,
     To feed on all aerial things,
     When I had legs!’
     And if not to embrace he sighs,
     She gives him breath of Youth awhile,
     Perspective of a breezy mile,
     Companionable hedgeways, lifting skies;
     Scenes where his nested dreams upon their hoard
     Brooded, or up to empyrean soared: 
     Enough to link him with a dotted line. 
     But cravings for an eagle’s flight,
     To top white peaks and serve wild wine
     Among the rosy undecayed,
     Bring only flash of shade
     From her full throbbing breast of day in night. 
     By what they crave are they betrayed: 
     And cavernous is that young dragon’s jaw,
     Crimson for all the fiery reptile saw
     In time now coveted, for teeth to flay,
     Once more consume, were Life recurrent May. 
     They to their moment of drawn breath,
     Which is the life that makes the death,
     The death that makes ethereal life would bind: 
     The death that breeds the spectre do they find. 
     Darkness is wedded and the waste regrets
     Beating as dead leaves on a fitful gust,
     By souls no longer dowered to climb
     Beneath their pack of dust,
     Whom envy of a lustrous prime,
     Eclipsed while yet invoked, besets,
     And dooms to sink and water sable flowers,
     That never gladdened eye or loaded bee. 
     Strain we the arms for Memory’s hours,
     We are the seized Persephone. 
     Responsive never to the soft desire
     For one prized tune is this our chord of life. 
     ’Tis clipped to deadness with a wanton knife,
     In wishes that for ecstasies aspire. 
     Yet have we glad companionship of Youth,
     Elysian meadows for the mind,
     Dare we to face deeds done, and in our tomb
     Filled with the parti-coloured bloom
     Of loved and hated, grasp all human truth
     Sowed by us down the mazy paths behind. 
     To feel that heaven must we that hell sound through: 
     Whence comes a line of continuity,
     That brings our middle station into view,
     Between those poles; a novel Earth we see,
     In likeness of us, made of banned and blest;
     The sower’s bed, but not the reaper’s rest: 
     An Earth alive with meanings, wherein meet
     Buried, and breathing, and to be. 
     Then of the junction of the three,
     Even as a heart in brain, full sweet
     May sense of soul, the sum of music, beat.