Page:Poems and ballads (IA poemsballads00swinrich).pdf/245

 The ghosts of words and dusty dreams, Old memories, faiths infirm and dead. Ye fools; for which among you deems His prayer can alter green to red Or stones to bread?

Why should ye bear with hopes and fears Till all these things be drawn in one, The sound of iron-footed years, And all the oppression that is done Under the sun?

Ye might end surely, surely pass Out of the multitude of things, Under the dust, beneath the grass, Deep in dim death, where no thought stings, No record clings.

No memory more of love or hate, No trouble, nothing that aspires, No sleepless labour thwarting fate, And thwarted; where no travail tires, Where no faith fires.

All passes, nought that has been is, Things good and evil have one end. Can anything be otherwise Though all men swear all things would mend With God to friend?