XVIII.

I had forgotten what I had lightly said,

And without speech, without a thought I went,

Steeped in that golden quiet, all content

To drink the transient beauty as it sped

Out of eternal darkness into time

To light and burn and know itself a fire;

Yet doomed — ah, fate of the fulfilled desire!—

To fade, a meteor, paying for the crime

Of living glorious in the denser air

Of our material earth. A strange despair,

An agony, yet strangely, subtly sweet

And tender as an unpassionate caress,

Filled me... Oh laughter! youth's conceit

Grown almost conscious of youth's feebleness!