That all should change to ghost and glance and gleam,

And so transmuted stand beyond all change,

And we be poised between the unmoving dream

And the sole moving moment—this is strange

Past all contrivance, word, or image, or sound,

Or silence, to express, that we who fall

Through time’s long ruin should weave this phantom ground

And in its ghostly borders gather all.

There incorruptible the child plays still,

The lover waits beside the trysting tree,

The good hour spans its heaven, and the ill,

Rapt in their silent immortality,

As in commemoration of a day

That having been can never pass away.