Collected Poems #226574

Shadow<br><br>Even the beauty of the rose doth cast,<br>When its bright, fervid noon is past,<br>A still and lengthening shadow in the dust,<br>Till darkness come<br>And take its strange dream home.<br><br>The transient bubbles of the water paint<br>'Neath their frail arch a shadow faint;<br>The golden nimbus of the windowed saint,<br>Till shine the stars,<br>Casts pale and trembling bars.<br><br>The loveliest thing earth hath, a shadow hath,<br>A dark and livelong hint of death,<br>Haunting it ever till its last faint breath.<br>Who, then, may tell<br>The beauty of heaven's shadowless asphodel?