That vanishing loveliness,
That burdening breath
No bond of life hath then
Nor grief of death.
'Tis the immortal thought
Whose passion still
Makes of the changing
The unchangeable.
Oh, thus thy beauty,
Loveliest on earth to me,
Dark with no sorrow, shines
And burns, with Thee.
SLEEP
Men all, and birds, and creeping beasts,
When the dark of night is deep,
From the moving wonder of their lives
Commit themselves to sleep.
Without a thought, or fear, they shut
The narrow gates of sense;
Heedless and quiet, in slumber turn
Their strength to impotence.
The transient strangeness of the earth
Their spirits no more see:
Within a silent gloom withdrawn,
They slumber in secrecy.
Two worlds they have—a globe forgot
Wheeling from dark to light;
And all the enchanted realm of dream
That burgeons out of night.
THE STRANGER
Half-hidden in a graveyard,
In the blackness of a yew,
Where never living creature stirs,
Nor sunbeam pierces through,