The woods decay, the woods decay and fall, The vapours weep their burthen to the ground, Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath, And after many a summer dies the swan. Me only cruel immortality Consumes: I wither slowly in thine arms, Here at the quiet limit of the world, A white-hair'd shadow roaming like a dream The ever-silent spaces of the East, Far-folded mists, and gleaming halls of morn.

And draw them all along, and flow To join the brimming river, For men may come and men may go, But I go on forever.

His deeds yet live, the worst is yet to come. Yet let your sleep for this one night be sound: I do forgive him!

I come from haunts of coot and hern, I make a sudden sally, And sparkle out among the fern, To bicker down a valley.

All beings come from little, and little is needed for them to come to nothing.

The years like great black oxen tread the world, And God the herdsman goads them on behind, And I am broken by their passing feet.

How old the world is! I walk between two eternities... What is my fleeting existence in comparison with that decaying rock, that valley digging its channel eve…