Moments

Moments there are when heart and brain ring clear,
When the eyes see and when the apt ears hear
More in a second's tick than in a year —
Moments at evening when the stars lean near.

And once I thought
Quick instants such as these,
That my new senses caught,
Were promises of vivid days to be
When I should stand grown up,
And brave, and full of careless, flaming song,
And free.

Those days have never come.
And now I know
That in this world of ours
Such moments never grow
Into a day —
Not even into hours —
They are as rare and brief as desert flowers.

There may be worlds where deathless shepherds lie,
Watching their starry flocks graze through the sky,
Pastures of lotus in the fields of space,
White with the tents of an eternal race.
Deep as the eye of a blue, land-locked sea
That timeless calm would seem to you and me;
Its aeons short with long felicity,
But strange, how strange!
Without the yeast of change.

Give me no changeless hours, for I know
Moments of earth are sweeter that they go;
Pluck me no deathless roses from the sky;
They bloom forever, but ours wilt and die.
Earth's joys are whetted on her stone of sorrow.
Tears are real tears while we can laugh to-morrow.