Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning, every poem an epitaph.

I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids Sprouting despondently at area gates.

I grow old … I grow old … I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

And would it have been worth it, after all, Would it have been worth while, After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets, After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor - And this, and so much more? -

At the violet hour, when the eyes and back Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits Like a taxi throbbing waiting I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives.

Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow For Thine is the Kingdom Between the conception And the creation Between the emotion And the response Falls the Shadow Life is very long Between the desire And the spasm Between the potency And the existence Between the essence And the descent Falls the Shadow For Thine is the Kingdom For Thine is Life is For Thine is the This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.

Men dislike being awakened from their death in life.