Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, Tears from the depths of some devine despairRise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, In looking on the happy autumn fields, And thinking of the days that are no more.

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!As tho’ to breathe were life!

I am part of all that I have met.

Thine are these orbs of light and shade;Thou madest Life in man and brute;Thou madest Death; and lo, thy footIs on the skull which thou hast made.

Never, oh! never, nothing will die;The stream flows,The wind blows,The cloud fleets,The heart beats,Nothing will die.

The long mechanic pacings to and fro, The set, gray life, and apathetic end.

We love but while we may; And therefore is my love so large for thee, Seeing it is not bounded save by love.

Love will conquer at the last.

Wearing the white flower of a blameless life, Before a thousand peering littlenesses, In that fierce light which beats upon a throne, And blackens every blot.