When you are old and gray and full of sleep, and nodding by the fire, take down this book and slowly read, and dream of the soft look your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep.

We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us that they may see, it may be, their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet.

When I clamber to the heights of sleep, Or when I grow excited with wine, suddenly I meet your face.

I have drunk ale from the Country of the Young / And weep because I know all things now.

How can I, that girl standing there, My attention fix On Roman or on Russian Or on Spanish politics?

Beloved, gaze in thine own heart, The holy tree is growing there; From joy the holy branches start, And all the trembling flowers they bear. The changing colours of its fruit Have dowered the stars with metry light; The surety of its hidden root Has planted quiet in the night; The shaking of its leafy head Has given the waves their melody, And made my lips and music wed, Murmuring a wizard song for thee.

I bring you with reverent hands The books of my numberless dreams.