Ere thou must fade, and I must go
1
Along the pathway of the snow,
Divine companion, whom to praise
I sang my secret roundelays
Through all the golden nights of June,
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While stole the young eavesdropping moon
To listen, and the night stood still
To make a silence for my song;
O Marvel, ere thy petals spill
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Upon the garden grass, my tongue
To sing thee to thy sleep is fain—
Till, as of old, thou comest again.
So many ages thou and I
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Have bloomed and sung and seemed to die,
Losing to find, finding to lose,—
Thou chalice of enchanted dews,
Thou being born of the soft breath
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Of Beauty through a thousand springs,
With bosom bared, flaunting at death;
Thou little shape that gathers up
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All colour in one magic cup,
And to the eye a glory brings
Past the magnificence of kings.
Since I was bird, and thou wert rose,
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Constant across the gulfs of Time,
Even as a poet shapes his rhyme
Till with a perfect art it goes,
So I thy beauty strove to sing
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In music lordlier each Spring—
Yet shall my song forever be
But as a shadow cast by thee.
I go into the dark, as thou—
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For lo! the red leaf on the bough
Signals the passage and decay
Of Beauty's transitory day;
Yet shall I ponder, as we lie
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Far from the summer-scented sky,
Nearer to thee in song to climb,
When I, with sure resurgent Time,
At twilight, in some garden close,
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Am bird once more, and thou a rose.