Strengthless they stand assembled in the shadow,

Blind to all strife and all to sorrow blind

Who reared the tower, who scored the April meadow:

Sheltered, they overshade my strengthless mind.

Those hands that gave their kind ungentle power

To summer’s travail, autumn did not spare:

That mind which knew the clear, the intact hour,

Now is disparted on a changeful air.

The hands that ached to help are pithless bone

(Mind, mind, the harsh pain and the unalloyed:

What fruit you bear, that must you bear alone!)

The broken helmet nods around its void:

So I disclothe me of this shadow’s blight;

And stand the axis of swift noon, sure night.