"I'll broider with my spray
Stone bridge and granite quay,
And bear great ships away
Unto the long wide sea."
So planned it, babbling by,
As water boiling fast
Within a basin high,
To top its brim at last.
Cradle by tomb is crossed.
Giants are early dead.
Scarce born, the brook was lost
Within a lake's deep bed.
TOMBS AND FUNERAL PYRES
No grim cadaver set its flaw
In happy days of pagan art,
And man, content with what he saw,
Stripped not the veil from beauty's heart.
No form once loved that buried lay,
A hideous spectre to appal,
Dropped bit by bit its flesh away,
As one by one our garments fall;
Or, when the days had drifted by
And sundered shrank the vaulted stones,
Showed naked to the daring eye
A motley heap of rattling bones.
But, rescued from the funeral pyre,
Life's ashen, light residuum
Lay soft, and, spent the cleansing fire,
The urn held sweet the body's sum,—
The sum of all that earth may claim
Of the soul's butterfly, soul passed,—
All that is left of spended flame
Upon the tripod at the last.