First and Last

Upon the borderlands of being,     Where life draws hardly breath     Between the lights and shadows fleeing     Fast as a word one saith,     Two flowers rejoice our eyesight, seeing     The dawns of birth and death.     Behind the babe his dawn is lying     Half risen with notes of mirth     From all the winds about it flying     Through new-born heaven and earth:     Before bright age his day for dying     Dawns equal-eyed with birth.     Equal the dews of even and dawn,     Equal the suns eye seen     A hands breadth risen and half withdrawn     But no bright hour between     Brings aught so bright by stream or lawn     To noonday growths of green.     Which flower of life may smell the sweeter     To loves insensual sense,     Which fragrance move with offering meeter     His soothed omnipotence,     Being chosen as fairer or as fleeter,     Borne hither or borne hence,     Loves foiled omniscience knows not: this     Were more than all he knows     With all his lore of bale and bliss,     The choice of rose and rose,     One red as lips that touch with his,     One white as moonlit snows.     No hope is half so sweet and good,     No dream of saint or sage     So fair as these are: no dark mood     But these might best assuage;     The sweet red rose of babyhood,     The white sweet rose of age,