Man cannot call the brimming instant back;
Time's an affair of instants spun to days;
If man must make an instant gold, or black,
Let him, he may; but Time must go his ways.
Life may be duller for an instant's blaze.
Life's an affair of instants spun to years,
Instants are only cause of all these tears.
I must down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life, To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow rover, And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.
What am I, Life? A thing of watery salt Held in cohesion by unresting cells, Which work they know not why, which never halt, Myself unwitting where their Master dwells?
All the great things of life are swiftly done, Creation, death, and love the double gate. However much we dawdle in the sun We have to hurry at the touch of Fate.
In the dark room where I began My mother's life made me a man. Through all the months of human birth Her beauty fed my common earth. I cannot see, nor breathe, nor stir, But through the death of some of her.
Each one could be a Jesus mild,
Each one has been a little child,
A little child with laughing look,
A lovely white unwritten book;
A book that God will take, my friend,
As each goes out at journey's end.
Since the printing press came into being, poetry has ceased to be the delight of the whole community of man; it has become the amusement and delight of the few.