Classic Poem

I
Still on my cheeks I feel their fondling breath:
How can it be that days so very nigh
Are gone, for ever gone, and merged in death!

This is a thing that no man fathoms quite,
And far too cruel for complaint or cry,
That all things slip and drip out of men's sight.

And that my own untrammeled I hath found
Out of a little child its gradual stair,
To me unearthly, dumb, strange as a hound.

Then: that I was a hundred summers ere
My birth, and that my forbears underground
Are closely kin to me as my own hair.

As much at one with me as my own hair.
II

The hours! when we are gazing at the peerless
Blue of the sea, and read Death's riddle stark
So easily and solemnly and fearless.

As little pale-faced maidens stand and hark,
Cold always, with their great eyes opened wide,
Hearken in silence looking into the dark,

Out of their sleep-drunk limbs they feel life glide
Noiselessly into grass, and trees of the wood,
And smiling tiredly know some little pride,

Even as a holy martyr sheds her blood.