Page:The Poems of Oscar Wilde.pdf/202

 With beat of systole and of diastole

One grand great life throbs through earth's giant heart,

And mighty waves of single Being roll

From nerveless germ to man, for we are part

Of every rock and bird and beast and hill,

One with the things that prey on us, and one with what we kill.

From lower cells of waking life we pass

To full perfection; thus the world grows old:

We who are godlike now were once a mass

Of quivering purple flecked with bars of gold,

Unsentient or of joy or misery,

And tossed in terrible tangles of some wild and wind-swept sea.

This hot hard flame with which our bodies burn

Will make some meadow blaze with daffodil,

Ay! and those argent breasts of thine will turn

To water-lilies; the brown fields men till

Will be more fruitful for our love to-night,

Nothing is lost in nature, all things live in Death's despite.

The boy's first kiss, the hyacinth's first bell,

The man's last passion, and the last red spear

That from the lily leaps, the asphodel

Which will not let its blossoms blow for fear 188