Classic Poem

Now all the hosts are marching to the grave;
The hosts are leaping from the edge of life
In a cascade of souls to sorrowful death.

And I am just awakened from the tomb;
And whither they are going, I have been
In timelessness laid by, in noiseless death.

Now, like a crocus in the autumn time,
My soul comes lambent from the endless night
Of death — a cyclamen, a crocus flower
Of windy autumn when the winds all sweep
The hosts away to death, where heap on heap
The dead are burning in the funeral wind.

Now, like a strange light breaking from the ground,
I venture from the halls of shadowy death —
A frail white gleam of resurrection.

I know where they are going, all the lives
That whirl and sweep like anxious leaves away
To have no rest save in the utter night
Of noiseless death; I know it well —
The death they will attain to, where they go —
I, who have been, and now am risen again.

Now like a cyclamen, a crocus flower
In autumn, like to a messenger come back
From embassy in death, I issue forth
Amid the autumn rushing red about
The bitter world, amid the smoke
From burning fires of many smouldering lives,
All bitter and corroding to the grave.

If they would listen, I could tell them now
The secret of the noiseless utter grave,
The secret in the blind mouth of the worm.
But on they go, like leaves within a wind,
Scarlet and crimson and a rust of blood,
Into the utter dark: they cannot hear.

So like a cyclamen, a crocus flower
I lift my inextinguishable flame
Of immortality into the world,
Of resurrection from the endless grave,
Of sweet returning from the sleep of death.

And still against the dark and violent wind,
Against the scarlet and against the red
And blood-brown flux of lives that sweep their way
In hosts towards the everlasting night,
I lift my little pure and lambent flame,
Unquenchable of wind or hosts of death
Or storms of tears, or rage, or blackening rain
Of full despair, I lift my tender flame
Of pure and lambent hostage from the dead —
Ambassador from halls of noiseless death,
He who returns again from out the tomb
Dressed in the grace of immortality,
A fragile stranger in the flux of lives
That pour cascade-like down the blackening wind
Of sheer oblivion.

Now like a cyclamen, a crocus flower
In putrid autumn issuing through the fall
Of lives, I speak to all who cannot hear;
I turn towards the bitter blackening wind,
I speak aloud to fleeting hosts of red
And crimson and the blood-brown heaps of slain,
Just as a cyclamen or crocus flower
Calls to the autumn, Resurrection!
I speak with a vain mouth.

Yet is uplifted in me the pure beam
Of immortality to kindle up
Another spring of yet another year,
Folded as yet: and all the fallen leaves
Sweep on to bitter, to corrosive death
Against me, yet they cannot make extinct
The perfect lambent flame which still goes up,
A tender gleam of immortality,
To start the glory of another year,
Another epoch in another year,
Another triumph on the face of earth,
Another race, another speech among
The multitudinous people unfused,
Unborn and unproduced, yet to be born.