Great their happiness who seeing
Still with unbenighted eyes
Kin of theirs who gave them being,
Sun and earth that made them wise,
Die and feel their embers quicken
Year by year in summer time,
When the cotton grasses thicken
On the hills they used to climb.
Shall we also be as they be,
Mingled with our mother clay,
Or return no more, it may be?
Who has knowledge, who shall say?
Yet we hope that from the bosom
Of our shaggy father Pan,
When the earth breaks into blossom
Richer from the dust of man,
Though the high gods smite and slay us,
Though we come not whence we go,
As the host of Menelaus
Came there many years ago;
Yet the selfsame wind shall bear us
From the same departing place
Out across the Gulf of Saros
And the peaks of Samothrace:
We shall pass in summer weather,
We shall come at eventide,
Where the fells stand up together
And all quiet things abide;
Mixed with cloud and wind and river,
Sun-distilled in dew and rain,
One with Cumberland for ever
We shall go not forth again.
