The Beginning

          Some day I shall rise and leave my friends
          And seek you again through the world's far ends,
          You whom I found so fair
          (Touch of your hands and smell of your hair!),
          My only god in the days that were.
          My eager feet shall find you again,
          Though the sullen years and the mark of pain
          Have changed you wholly; for I shall know
          (How could I forget having loved you so?),
          In the sad half-light of evening,
          The face that was all my sunrising.
          So then at the ends of the earth I'll stand
          And hold you fiercely by either hand,
          And seeing your age and ashen hair
          I'll curse the thing that once you were,
          Because it is changed and pale and old
          (Lips that were scarlet, hair that was gold!),
          And I loved you before you were old and wise,
          When the flame of youth was strong in your eyes,
          --And my heart is sick with memories.


          Dust

          When the white flame in us is gone,
          And we that lost the world's delight
          Stiffen in darkness, left alone
          To crumble in our separate night;
                
          When your swift hair is quiet in death,
          And through the lips corruption thrust
          Has stilled the labour of my breath--
          When we are dust, when we are dust!--
                
          Not dead, not undesirous yet,
          Still sentient, still unsatisfied,
          We'll ride the air, and shine, and flit,
          Around the places where we died,
                
          And dance as dust before the sun,
          And light of foot, and unconfined,
          Hurry from road to road, and run
          About the errands of the wind.
                
          And every mote, on earth or air
          Will speed and gleam, down later days
          And like a secret pilgrim fare
          By eager and invisible ways,
                
          Nor ever rest, nor ever lie
          Till, beyond thinking, out of view,
          One mote of all the dust that's I
          Shall meet one atom that was you.
                
          Then in some garden hushed from wind,
          Warm in a sunset's afterglow,
          The lovers in the flowers will find
          A sweet and strange unquiet grow
                
          Upon the peace; and, past desiring,
          So high a beauty in the air,
          And such a light, and such a quiring,
          And such a radiant ecstasy there,
                
          They'll know not if it's fire, or dew,
          Or out of earth, or in the height,
          Singing, or flame, or scent, or hue,
          Or two that pass, in light, to light,
                
          Out of the garden, higher, higher....
          But in that instant they shall learn
          The shattering ecstasy of our fire,
          And the weak passionless hearts will burn
                
          And faint in that amazing glow,
          Until the darkness close above;
          And they will know -- poor fools, they'll know! --
          One moment, what it is to love.

  - Rupert Brooke