grey-crested sons of men: 
     She tributary to her aged restores
     The living in the dead; she will inspire
     Faith homelier than on the Yonder shores,
     Abhorring these as mire,
     Uncertain steps, in dimness gropes,
     With mortal tremours pricking hopes,
     And, by the final Bacchic of the lusts
     Propelled, the Bacchic of the spirit trusts: 
     A fervour drunk from mystic hierophants;
     Not utterly misled, though blindly led,
     Led round fermenting eddies.  Faith she plants
     In her own firmness as our midway road: 
     Which rightly Youth has read, though blindly read;
     Her essence reading in her toothsome goad;
     Spur of bright dreams experience disenchants. 
     But love we well the young, her road midway
     The darknesses runs consecrated clay. 
     Despite our feeble hold on this green home,
     And the vast outer strangeness void of dome,
     Shall we be with them, of them, taught to feel,
     Up to the moment of our prostrate fall,
     The life they deem voluptuously real
     Is more than empty echo of a call,
     Or shadow of a shade, or swing of tides;
     As brooding upon age, when veins congeal,
     Grey palsy nods to think.  With us for guides,
     Another step above the animal,
     To views in Alpine thought are they helped on. 
     Good if so far we live in them when gone!

     And there the arrowy eagle of the height
     Becomes the little bird that hops to feed,
     Glad of a crumb, for tempered appetite
     To make it wholesome blood and fruitful seed. 
     Then Memory strikes on no slack string,
     Nor sectional will varied Life appear: 
     Perforce of soul discerned in mind, we hear
     Earth with her Onward chime, with Winter Spring. 
     And ours the mellow note, while sharing joys
     No more subjecting mortals who have learnt
     To build for happiness on equipoise,
     The Pleasures read in sparks of substance burnt;
     Know in our seasons an integral wheel,
     That rolls us to a mark may yet be willed. 
     This, the truistic rubbish under heel
     Of all the world, we peck at and are filled.

     Penetration and trust

     I

     Sleek as a lizard at round of a stone,
     The look of her heart slipped out and in. 
     Sweet on her lord her soft eyes shone,
     As innocents clear of a shade of sin.

     II

     He laid a finger under her chin,
     His arm for her girdle at waist was thrown: 
     Now, what will happen and who will win,
     With me in the fight and my lady lone?

     III

     He clasped her, clasping a shape of stone;
     Was fire on her eyes till they let him in. 
     Her breast to a God of the daybeams shone,
     And never a corner for serpent sin.