WELL we know, not ever here is a footing for thy dream:
Thou art sick for horse and spear beside an Asian stream,
For the hearth-smoke in the wild, for the goatherd's stave,
For a beauty far exiled, a belief within its grave.
While another sky and ground orb thy strange remembering,
And no world of mortal bound is the master of thy wing,
Canst thou yet thy fate forgive, that the godhead in thy breast
Has this life at least to live as a force in rhythmic rest,
As a seed that bides the hour of obscureness and decay,
Being troth of flower to flower down the long dynastic day?
Child whom elder airs enfold, who hast greatness to maintain
Where heroic hap of old may return and shine again,
As too oft across thy heart flits the too familiar light,
How alarms of love upstart at the token quick and slight!
Lest captivity be o'er, lest thou glide away, and so
From our tents of Nevermore strike the trail of Long Ago.