The loveliness of water, its faery ways
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With cloud and wind, its myriad sorceries
With morning and the moon, and stars agaze
In its still glass, and the tranced summer trees;
The vowelled rivers, the rough-throated seas,
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The tides that brim with silver the grassy plain,
Or strew lone islands with lost argosies:
We come and go—these things remain.
Fire and its gnomes, soft-talking as it plays,
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Dream-like, amid its fretted imageries,
Or melting the wild hills, and with its blaze
Licking the very stars; and, even as these,
The winds that blow through all the centuries,
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The falling snow, the shining April rain,
Birds singing, and the far-off Pleiades:
We come and go—these things remain.
God's glory, and the march of nights and days,
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The seals upon the ancient mysteries
Of rose and star and woman's magic face,
That, seeing, man loves, yet knows not what he sees;
The old sweet sins, the old sweet sanctuaries;
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War and long peace, then war and peace again;
The Dark and in Death's hands the dreadful keys:
We come and go—these things remain.
Prince, save ourselves, there is but little flees
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That comes not back, even as this refrain;
'Faith, 'tis a thought that doth me greatly please:
We come and go—these things remain.