White, O white face— from disenchanted days wither alike dark rose and fiery bays: no gift within our hands,

YOU are as gold as the half—ripe grain that merges to gold again, as white as the white rain that beats through

NOR skin nor hide nor fleece Shall cover you, Nor curtain of crimson nor fine Shelter of cedar—wood be over you, Nor the fir—tree

Silver dust lifted from the earth, higher than my arms reach, you have mounted. O silver,

I should have thought in a dream you would have brought some lovely, perilous thing, orchids piled in a great sheath, as who would say (in a dream),

So you have swept me back, I who could have walked with the l… above the earth, I who could have slept among the l… at last;

Over and back, the long waves crawl and track the sand with foam; night darkens, and the sea takes on that desperate tone

Each of us like you has died once, has passed through drift of wood—l… cracked and bent and tortured and unbent

Stars wheel in purple, yours is no… as Hesperus, nor yet so great a st… as bright Aldeboran or Sirius, nor yet the stained and brilliant… stars turn in purple, glorious to…

Can we believe—by an effort comfort our hearts: it is not waste all this, not placed here in disgust, street after street,