LITMIR.BIZ

      Beauty has come to make no longer stay

      Than the bright buds of May

      In May-time do.

      Beauty is with us for one hour, one hour,

      Life is so brief a flower;

      Thoughts are so few.

      Thoughts are so few with mastery to give

      Shape to these fugitive

      Dear brevities,

      That even in its hour beauty is blind,

      Because the shallow mind

      Not sees, not sees.

      And in the mind of man only can be

      Alert prosperity

      For beauty brief.

      So, what can be but little comes to less

      Upon the wilderness

      Of unbelief.

      And beauty that has but an hour to spend

      With you for friend,

      Goes outcast by.

      But know, but know – for all she is outcast —

      It is not she at last,

      But you that die.

      The shadows that companion me

      From chronicles and poetry

      More constant and substantial are

      Than these my men familiar,

      Who draw with me uncertain breath

      A little while this side of death;

      For you, my friend, may fail to keep

      To-morrow’s tryst, so darkly deep

      The motions mutable that give

      To flesh its brief prerogative,

      And in the pleasant hours we make

      Together for devotion’s sake,

      Always the testament I see

      That is our twin mortality.

      But those from the recorded page

      Keep an eternal pilgrimage.

      They stedfastly inhabit here

      With no mortality to fear,

      And my communion with them

      Ails not in the mind’s stratagem

      Against the sudden blow, the date

      That once must fall unfortunate.

      They fret not nor persuade, and when

      These graduates I entertain,

      I grieve not that I too must fall

      As you, my friend, to funeral,

      But rather find example there

      That, when my boughs of time are bare,

      And nothing more the body’s chance

      Governs my careful circumstance,

      I shall, upon that later birth,

      Walk in immortal fields of earth.

      Long ago some builder thrust

      Heavenward in Southampton town

      His spire and beamed his bells,

      Largely conceiving from the dust

      That pinnacle for ringing down

      Orisons and Noëls.

      In his imagination rang,

      Through generations challenging

      His peal on simple men,

      Who, as the heart within him sang,

      In daily townfaring should sing

      By year and year again.

      Now often to their ringing go

      The bellmen with lean Time at heel,

      Intent on daily cares;

      The bells ring high, the bells ring low,

      The ringers ring the builder’s peal

      Of tidings unawares.

      And all the bells’ might well be dumb

      For any quickening in the street

      Of customary ears;

      And so at last proud builders come

      With dreams and virtues to defeat

      Among the clouding years.

      Now, waiting on Southampton sea

      For exile, through the silver night

      I hear Noël! Noël!

      Through generations down to me

      Your challenge, builder, comes aright,

      Bell by obedient bell.

      You wake an hour with me; then wide

      Though be the lapses of your sleep

      You yet shall wake again;

      And thus, old builder, on the tide

      Of immortality you keep

      Your way from brain to brain.

      Of old men wrought strange gods for mystery,

      Implored

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