I

Shadow and light each other chase on earth;
Men call them day and night, and from their birth
Apportion out their being into time,
And fill or waste away uncounted hours,
Those measured sands of our vitality,
With deeds or thoughts or petty or sublime.
Meanwhile, the passions of nerved manhood die;
Age chills the shrunken veins; the living flowers
Of hope and faith are seared, the hair grows grey
With grief or years; and he, the inspiring bard,
Who bore the weight of time for one reward,
To blend himself with things of undecay,
Looks round and falters, feeling he must pass,
And join the multitude beneath the grass
That sleep, absorbed no more in the great strife.

II

My path of life has pointed to one goal.
I took the wings of Poesy to find
Truth, whose eternal dwelling-place and life
Is in the deep recesses of the soul.
I laid my songs upon her shrine, confessed
All from the heart my fellow-men had shown;
All I had felt, proved, fathomed of my own,
Passion or suffering, poured forth or repressed;
All from the power imaginative grown;
I placed them on her altar with a faith
Calm and yet bold, that mocked the reach of death.
I passed away unheeded as the wind
That from the oak on earth its acorn casts,
To root and strengthen with the nurturing blasts,
Or, withering, die, and leave no trace behind.