NAY, let us walk from fire unto fire,
 From passionate pain to deadlier delight,--
 I am too young to live without desire,
 Too young art thou to waste this summer night
 Asking those idle questions which of old
 Man sought of seer and oracle, and no reply was told.

 For, sweet, to feel is better than to know,
 And wisdom is a childless heritage,
 One pulse of passion--youth's first fiery glow,--
 Are worth the hoarded proverbs of the sage:
 Vex not thy soul with dead philosophy,
 Have we not lips to kiss with, hearts to love, and eyes to see!

 Dost thou not hear the murmuring nightingale
 Like water bubbling from a silver jar,
 So soft she sings the envious moon is pale,
 That high in heaven she is hung so far
 She cannot hear that love-enraptured tune,--
 Mark how she wreathes each horn with mist, yon late and labouring
 moon.

 White lilies, in whose cups the gold bees dream,
 The fallen snow of petals where the breeze
 Scatters the chestnut blossom, or the gleam
 Of boyish limbs in water,--are not these
 Enough for thee, dost thou desire more?
 Alas! the Gods will give nought else from their eternal store.

 For our high Gods have sick and wearied grown
 Of all our endless sins, our vain endeavour
 For wasted days of youth to make atone
 By pain or prayer or priest, and never, never,
 Hearken they now to either good or ill,
 But send their rain upon the just and the unjust at will.

 They sit at ease, our Gods they sit at ease,
 Strewing with leaves of rose their scented wine,
 They sleep, they sleep, beneath the rocking trees
 Where asphodel and yellow lotus twine,
 Mourning the old glad days before they knew
 What evil things the heart of man could dream, and dreaming do.

 And far beneath the brazen floor they see
 Like swarming flies the crowd of little men,
 The bustle of small lives, then wearily
 Back to their lotus-haunts they turn again
 Kissing each other's mouths, and mix more deep
 The poppy-seeded draught which brings soft purple-lidded sleep.

 There all day long the golden-vestured sun,
 Their torch-bearer, stands with his torch a-blaze,
 And when the gaudy web of noon is spun
 By its twelve maidens through the crimson haze
 Fresh from Endymion's arms comes forth the moon,
 And the immortal Gods in toils of mortal passions swoon.

 There walks Queen Juno through some dewy mead
 Her grand white feet flecked with the saffron dust
 Of wind-stirred lilies, while young Ganymede
 Leaps in the hot and amber-foaming must,
 His curls all tossed, as when the eagle bare
 The frightened boy from Ida through the blue Ionian air.

 There in the green heart of some garden close
 Queen Venus with the shepherd at her side,
 Her warm soft body like the briar rose
 Which would be white yet blushes at its pride,
 Laughs low for love, till jealous Salmacis
 Peers through the myrtle-leaves and sighs for pain of lonely
 bliss.

 There never does that dreary north-wind blow
 Which leaves our English forests bleak and bare,
 Nor ever falls the swift white-feathered snow,
 Nor doth the red-toothed lightning ever dare
 To wake them in the silver-fretted night
 When we lie weeping for some sweet sad sin, some dead delight.

 Alas! they know the far Lethæan spring,
 The violet-hidden waters well they know,
 Where one whose feet with tired wandering
 Are faint and broken may take heart and go,
 And from those dark depths cool and crystalline
 Drink, and draw balm, and sleep for sleepless souls, and anodyne.

 But we oppress our natures, God or Fate
 Is our enemy, we starve and feed
 On vain repentance--O we are born too late!
 What balm for us in bruisèd poppy seed
 Who crowd into one finite pulse of time
 The joy of infinite love and the fierce pain of infinite crime.

 O we are wearied of this sense of guilt,
 Wearied of pleasure's paramour despair,
 Wearied of every temple we have built,
 Wearied of every right, unanswered prayer,
 For man is weak; God sleeps: and heaven is high:
 One fiery-coloured moment: one great love; and lo! we die.

 Ah! but no ferry-man with labouring pole
 Nears his black shallop to the flowerless strand,
 No little coin of bronze can bring the soul
 Over Death's river to the sunless land,
 Victim and wine and vow are all in vain,
 The tomb is sealed; the soldiers watch; the dead rise not again.

 We are resolved into the supreme air,
 We are made one with what we touch and see,
 With our heart's blood each crimson sun is fair,
 With our young lives each spring-impassioned tree
 Flames into green, the wildest beasts that range
 The moor our kinsmen are, all life is one, and all is change.

 With beat of systole and of diastole
 One grand great life