A bird flies up from the hayfield;
Sweet is the new-mown grass;
But all those flowers laid low at noonday!
And only my sighed Alas!
Man garners his own with scythe and gun-
Seed of the weed or blood;
But the life dries out of a foolish heart
When the dust is christened mud.
The beauty is gone … Saints sing of heaven:
Death’s but the narrow pass
From a transient dream to a changeless Real-
Yet I mourn the flower of the grass.
I grieve for the nameless lost ones,
For the broken loves, the woe,
The godlike courage, the bitter end,
And the facing a lightless No.
Oh, my bird from the swathes of the hayfield,
The rancid stench of the grass!
And a soul stricken mute by a sorrowing world,
And the sigh of that one Alas!
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