Life, what art thou? A golden fountain art thou: When the fountain springs not, life, depart thou!
Saw ye the stars last night, all still, Remote, and bitter-cold, Who were too passionless to thrill, Being so wise and old?
O saw ye not one star alight, A leap of silver fire, Did ye not see it sear the night And die of its own desire?
Saw ye the ancient stars look on Locked in a chilly dream Which banished the awakened one Beyond their frozen scheme?
O saw ye not the ashen band Fade in the morning-gold, Who long had ceased to understand, Being so bitter-old?
Ye petrified on heavenly thrones, Was there not chaos once? Ye did not keep your ordered zones When ye were raging suns!
Once flaming rivers were your breath And the wild hairs of your brow-- Once ye were life, once ye were death! Ye are not either now.
I am as awful as my brother War, I am the sudden silence after clamour. I am the face that shows the seamy scar When blood has lost its frenzy and its glamour. Men in my pause shall know the cost at last That is not to be paid in triumphs or tears, Men will begin to judge the thing that’s past As men will judge it in a hundred years.
Nations! whose ravenous engines must be fed Endlessly with the father and the son, My naked light upon your darkness, dread!-- By which ye shall behold what ye have done: Whereon, more like a vulture than a dove, Ye set my seal in hatred, not in love.
Let no man call me good. I am not blest. My single virtue is the end of crimes, I only am the period of unrest, The ceasing of the horrors of the times; My good is but the negative of ill, Such ill as bends the spirit with despair, Such ill as makes the nations’ soul stand still And freeze to stone beneath its Gorgon glare.
Be blunt, and say that peace is but a state Wherein the active soul is free to move, And nations only show as mean or great According to the spirit then they prove.-- O which of ye whose battle-cry is Hate Will first in peace dare shout the name of Love?
Now that you too must shortly go the way Which in these bloodshot years uncounted men Have gone in vanishing armies day by day, And in their numbers will not come again: I must not strain the moments of our meeting Striving each look, each accent, not to miss, Or question of our parting and our greeting, Is this the last of all? is this--or this?
