GOLD, with an innermost speck
Of silver, singing
afloat
Beneath the
night,
Like balls
of thistle-down
Wandering up and down
Over the whispering town
Seeking where to
alight!
Slowly, above the street
Above the ebb of feet
Drifting in
flight;
Still, in
the purple distance
The gold of their strange
persistence
As
they cross and part and meet
And pass out of sight!
The seed-ball of the sun
Is broken at last, and done
Is the orb of
day.
Now to the
separate ends
Seed
after day-seed wends
A separate way.
No sun will ever rise
Again on the wonted skies
In the midst of the
spheres.
The globe
of the day, over-ripe,
Is shattered at last beneath the
stripe
Of the
wind, and its oneness veers
Out myriad-wise.
Seed after seed after seed
Drifts over the town, in its
need
To sink and
have done;
To
settle at last in the dark,
To bury its weary spark
Where the end is
begun.
Darkness, and depth of sleep,
Nothing to know or to
weep
Where the
seed sinks in
To
the earth of the under-night
Where all is silent, quite
Still, and the darknesses
steep
Out all the
sin.