* * *

When down the loud streets I go straying,
To churches where the people stream,
Or sit where youth’s wild thoughts are playing,
I yield mysdf up to my dream.

I say: “How fast the years are flowing!
How many of us vanish here!
To vaults eternal all are going;
For some the time’s already near.”

I see a lonely oak-tree thriving.
And think : “This patriarch will stay,
My unremembered life surviving
As it survived my fathers’ day.”

I hold a child in my embraces,
And as I hold him, think: “Good-bye.
For you shall live in my old places;
Days bloom for you, for me they die.”

On every day, in every season,
My thoughts have kept Death near to me;
As he advances, so my reason
Asks when his birthday is to be.

Where shall my fated end enfold me?
In alien lands, at sea, in fight?
Or shall some neighbour valley hold me
And clasp my frozen body tight?

But though it matters not where lying
My senseless body shall decay,
Yet, near to my own threshold dying,
There above all I wish to stay.

Grant that beside the graveyard’s portal
Young children play in life’s delight,
And in her loveliness immortal
Uncaring Nature still shine bright!