Microcosm

The memory of what we've lost

Is with us more than what we've won;

Perhaps because we count the cost

By what we could, yet have not done.

‘ Twixt act and purpose fate hath drawn

Invisible threads we can not break,

And puppet-like these move us on

The stage of life, and break or make.

Less than the dust from which we're wrought,

We come and go, and still are hurled

From change to change, from naught to naught,

Heirs of oblivion and the world.