| |
| I COME from nothing; but from where | |
| Come the undying thoughts I bear? | |
| Down, through long links of death and birth, | |
| From the past poets of the earth. | |
| My immortality is there. | 5 |
| |
| I am like the blossom of an hour. | |
| But long, long vanished sun and shower | |
| Awoke my breath i’ the young world’s air. | |
| I track the past back everywhere | |
| Through seed and flower and seed and flower. | 10 |
| |
| Or I am like a stream that flows | |
| Full of the cold springs that arose | |
| In morning lands, in distant hills; | |
| And down the plain my channel fills | |
| With melting of forgotten snows. | 15 |
| |
| Voices I have not heard possessed | |
| My own fresh songs; my thoughts are blessed | |
| With relics of the far unknown; | |
| And mixed with memories not my own | |
| The sweet streams throng into my breast. | 20 |
| |
| Before this life began to be, | |
| The happy songs that wake in me | |
| Woke long ago, and far apart | |
| Heavily on this little heart | |
| Presses this immortality. | 25 |
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