—     10     — 
 
For the bare-legged village-boy, is to the Sun, 
The Sire of Life. 
The Lover and the Wife, 
Sun-canopied, ignore.  The people hear ; 
Then, be the people smitten of grey Fear, 
It is no odds ! 
 
I have seen the eternal Gods 
Sit, star-wed, in old Egypt by the Nile ; 
The same calm pose, the inscrutable, wan smile, 
On every lip alike. 
Time hath not had his will to strike 
At them ;  they abide, they pass through all. 
Though their most ancient names may fall, 
They stir not nor are weary of 
Life, for with them, even as with us, Life is but Love. 
They know, we know ;  let, then, the writing go ! 
That, in the very truth, we do not know. 
 
It may be in the centuries of our life 
Since we were man and wife 
There stirs some incarnation of that love. 
Some rosebud in the garden of spices blows, 
Some offshoot from the Rose 
Of the World, the Rose of all Delight, 
The Rose of Dew, the Rose of Love and Night, 
The Rose of Silence, covering as with a vesture 
The solemn unity of things