Classic Poem

" What of vile dust?" the preacher said.
Methought the whole world woke,
The dead stone lived beneath my foot,
And my whole body spoke.

" You, that play tyrant to the dust,
And stamp its wrinkled face,
This patient star that flings you not
Far into homeless space.

" Come down out of your dusty shrine
The living dust to see,
The flowers that at your sermon's end
Stand blazing silently.

" Rich white and blood-red blossom; stones,
Lichens like fire encrust;
A gleam of blue, a glare of gold,
The vision of the dust.

" Pass them all by: till as you come
Where, at a city's edge,
Under a tree — I know it well —
Under a lattice ledge,

" The sunshine falls on one brown head.
You, too, O clod of clay,
Eater of stones, may haply hear
The trumpets of that day.

" When God to all his paladins
By his own splendour swore
To make a fairer face than heaven,
Of dust and nothing more."