From too much love of livingFrom hope and fear set free,We thank with brief thanksgivingWhatever gods may beThat no life lives for ever;That dead men rise up never;That even the weariest riverWinds somewhere safe to sea.Then star nor sun shall waken,Nor any change of light:Nor sound of waters shaken,Nor any sound or sight:Nor wintry leaves nor vernal,Nor days nor things diurnal;Only the sleep eternalIn an eternal night.

Before the beginning of yearsThere came to the making of manTime, with a gift of tears;Grief, with a glass that ran;Pleasure, with pain for leaven;Summer, with flowers that fell;Remembrance, fallen from heaven,And madness risen from hell;Strength without hands to smite;Love that endures for a breath;Night, the shadow of light,And Life, the shadow of death.

Here now in his triumph where all things falter, Stretched out on the spoils that his own hand spread,As a god self-slain on his own strange altar, Death lies dead.

If love were what the rose is, And I were like the leaf, Our lives would grow together In sad or singing weather.

Our way is where God knows And Love knows where: We are in Love's hand to-day.

We, drinking love at the furthest springs, Covered with love as a covering tree, We had grown as gods, as the gods above, Filled from the heart to the lips with love, Held fast in his hands, clothed warm with his wings, O love, my love, had you loved but me!

Love, as is told by the seers of old, Comes as a butterfly tipped with gold, Flutters and flies in sunlit skies, Weaving round hearts that were one time cold.

O Love, O great god Love, what have I done, That thou shouldst hunger so after my death? My heart is harmless as my life's first day: Seek out some false fair woman, and plague her Till her tears even as my tears fill her bed.

Love laid his sleepless head On a thorny rose bed: And his eyes with tears were red, And pale his lips as the dead.