Classic Poem

One sleep, one stirring,
Were one life enough
Were they enough one life.

One is so many, so many,
Innumerably, more and more wearily,
Never quite, never quite.

Will beauty, can beauty,
Allay the deficiency?
(Never quite, never quite.)

The lagging, the dying,
The more and more of the many,
The less of the one,
Until the diverse dwindling
Is none:
After the death,
What can go on?

Still the lagging
Of life now less than nothing,
An approaching
More ineffusively