Nos Immortales
Perhaps we go with wind and cloud and sun,Into the free companionship of air;Perhaps with sunsets when the day is done,All’s one to me—I do not greatly care;So long as there are brown hills—and a treeLike a mad prophet in a land of dearth—And I can lie and hear eternallyThe vast monotonous breathing of the earth.
I have known hours, slow and golden-glowing,Lovely with laughter and suffused with light,O Lord, in such a time appoint my going,When the hands clench, and the cold face grows white,And the spark dies within the feeble brain,Spilling its star-dust back to dust again.