Page:Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1918.djvu/1146

 JOHN MASEFIELD

Love like a madman, shaking, blind, Till self is burnt into a kind Possession of another mind;

Brood upon beauty, till the grace Of beauty with the holy face Brings peace into the bitter place;

Prove in the lifeless granites, scan

The stars for hope, for guide, for plan ;

Live as a woman or a man;

Fasten to lover or to friend, Until the heart break at the end The break of death that cannot mend;

Then to lie useless, helpless^ still, Down in the earth, in dark, to fill The roots of grass or daffodil.

Down in the earth, in dark, alone,

A mockery of the ghost in bone,

The strangeness, passing the unknown.

Time will go by, that outlasts clocks, Dawn in the thorps will rouse the cocks, Sunset be glory on the rocks.

But it, the thing, will never heed Even the rootling from the seed Thrusting to suck it for its need.

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