III.

Would that I were asleep inside the earth,

Beneath the bosom-loam, the mothering womb;

I'd sleep my days and nights away in dark

Till dawn or Death come take me from my tomb.

The air, the cold, cold air is far too much

For these weak lungs to bear; the sun too bright

For eyes like mine to open. And I touch

The soulless streets of Man in crowded night

To feel my hand recoil, and my feet

Begin to run for yonder fields of gold!

---Ah! my grassy heart which longs for the wood

And buried root, between the matted fold

Of earth and earth, to happily consume

Myself into myself inside that womb!

II.

World-held---the thing as hung upon a string
In space, a hanging ball of wet and earth
Where pagan clans would dance around the birth
Swell'd upward, fire and wood surrounding, sing
And breathe up burning embers through the ring
Of sky and star collected; drunken mirth
Reflected in the beaker full of worth
Called wine---When, falcon-flown on distant wing,
The Watcher in his eye beholds the heaven
Then beneath him, and the world weightless,
Brightly hanging, placeless, one and seven
Lamplights in the void, the vaulting faceless
Wane of Gaia, wild in its course of ken---
Oh, but to stand on ancient Earth again!

I.

What waste and squandered Life when on these shores

Of premature Regret I lay me down―

Down on tired sands that keep me from the fret

And fever of a world in chains. What Life!

Life that once was, now lost and nothing more

To Lethe tides, and torn as from a book

Like leaves that ever beckon you to look

Inside, to stand before that which you fear.

I cannot look, and neither can I stand,

For here upon the sand, I soon forget

That wasted life, my premature Regret,

Here upon the fading banks of Lethe.