The will to live : and these frail friends,
The women I shall draw you, fail
Of more importance to earth’s ends
Than to my life a finger-nail.
’Twere pain, no doubt, were torn away
One, a minute distemperature.
I spend a fraction of the day
Plying the art of manicure.
But always beats the heart: the more
I polish, tint, or carve, I ask
Strength from the heart’s too generous store
To bend my fingers to the task.
Cease : I am broken: nought remains.
The brain’s electric waves are still ;
No blood beats eager in the veins;
The mind sinks deathward, and the will.
It is no figure of boy’s speech,
Lover's enthusiasm, rhyme
Magniloquent of bard, to reach
Truth through the husk of space and time:
No truth is more devout than this :
“In you I live: I live in you.”
Had Latmos not known Artemis,
Where were the faint lights of that dew
Of Keats? O maiden moon of mine,
Imperial crescent, rise and shine!
36