FIRST AND LAST

Upon the borderlands of being,

Where life draws hardly breath

Between the lights and shadows fleeing

Fast as a word one saith,

Two flowers rejoice our eyesight, seeing

The dawns of birth and death.

Behind the babe his dawn is lying

Half risen with notes of mirth

From all the winds about it flying

Through new-born heaven and earth:

Before bright age his day for dying

Dawns equal-eyed with birth.

Equal the dews of even and dawn,

Equal the sun's eye seen

A hand's breadth risen and half withdrawn:

But no bright hour between

Brings aught so bright by stream or lawn

To noonday growths of green.

Which flower of life may smell the sweeter

To love's insensual sense,

Which fragrance move with offering meeter

His soothed omnipotence,

Being chosen as fairer or as fleeter,

Borne hither or borne hence,

Love's foiled omniscience knows not: this

Were more than all he knows

With all his lore of bale and bliss,

The choice of rose and rose,

One red as lips that touch with his,

One white as moonlit snows.

No hope is half so sweet and good,

No dream of saint or sage

So fair as these are: no dark mood

But these might best assuage;

The sweet red rose of babyhood,

The white sweet rose of age.