[AFTER ALL—]
When the time comes for me to die
To-morrow or some other day,
If God should bid me make reply,
’What wilt thou?’ I shall say:
O God, Thy world was great and fair,
Yet give me to forget it clean;
Vex me no more with things that were,
And things that might have been.
I loved, I toiled—throve ill and well,
Lived certain years, and murmur’d not.
Now grant me in that land to dwell
Where all things are forgot.
For others, Lord, Thy purging fires,
The loves reknit, the crown, the palm.
For me, the death of all desires
In deep, eternal calm.
[EVENSONG]
In the heart of a German forest I followed the winding ways
Deep-cushioned with moss, and barr’d with the sunset’s slanting rays,
When out of the distance dim, where no end to the path was seen,
But the breath of the Springtime clung like a motionless mist of green,
I heard a sound of singing, unearthly-sad and clear,
Rise from the forest deeps and float on the evening air.