Cleft in life's hills, Youth is a sheltered swale Where for a while we lie in indolence And watch time's waterfall thin as a veil That falls and hangs and smokes in long suspense, And there a fountain spouts of purest joy That feeds the fall, birds whistle on its brim, Often I lay beside it when a boy And saw the future mirrored vague and dim--
Heaven was there a strangely clouded page, Two rivers on the plains met like a "Y," And blue as ghosts the mountains of old age Rolled down the western sky.
High Tide o' Life's a city by the sea, By tide rips where the flood comes shouting in, On straits that bring up ships with spicèd freights And sails as scarlet as a woman's sin. A mart where merchants chaffer on the docks For pearls and feather work and jewel'd shoon, And hurry off to feast when all the clocks Strike anvil-tongued a thousand-noted noon.
High Tide o' Life's a city proudly vain, With minarets from whence men can descry, Like domes of giants' houses, chain on chain, Death's arid mountains arabesque the sky. And hoary uplands wave with tasseled corn, And long sun pencils strike the hills, afar, The walled towns smolder in the fire of morn Like embers of a sullen, fallen star.
High Tide o' Life's an upland where no breath Of frost has ever crept across the grass, But days as idle as a shibboleth Like golden coins are quickly spent. They pass In hidden valleys fit for secret lust, Where strange winged-sins like griffin-hippogryphs Bask with their glittering scales in white-hot dust Along a sunstruck face of basalt cliffs.
It is an isle in red, witch-haunted seas Where lovers' nights, the jade-faced moon stands still, Pouring an amber twilight through the trees, Across the copper ocean and the hill. High Tide o' Life's a plain laid easterly In realms ruled over by some fabled _Djinn_ Where rivers blue as _lapis-lazuli_ Rush down to meet the flood tides roaring in.
Old age is like a bleak plateau, About--around--the dead leaves blow In shouting, keening winter wind, Below life's plains lie cloud bedimmed Below. In long gray lines the dead leaves go, The stone blue shadows limn the snow, The thwacking branches creak and mutter In scarecrow desolation utter. In scarecrow Clothes the last leaves flutter And in dry hollows rasp and putter About the starved, old, carven faces, Around the ancient burial places About, around, below.