178
IDEAL PASSION
XXXIV
O ecstasy of the remembering heart
That makes of all time but one stretchèd day,
And brings us forward on life's glorious way
An hour or two before we shall depart!
And thus the whole world melts to timeless art,
And we in the eternal moment stay;
That is accomplished for which all men pray,
And blunted is the ever-fatal dart.
Among the flowering ruins of old time
I played with beauty's fragments; Death and Hope
Upon the dizzy stone beheld me climb,
And in the acanthus-mantled marble grope;
I only heard the dawn Memnonian chime
'Mid the wild grasses and wild heliotrope.
