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We think of a paradise, we think of a heaven,
Cataracts flashing, fruits on all the trees,
The cliffs yielding their gold,
Wings over seas,
Songs in whose web our simple hearts lie woven:

But from this childhood’s heaven issues forth
In his black cloak, the hooded shape of man,
And overhead,
No laden boughs, no sun
But storms, gulls, comets flung from a dark north.

Fruits, thronging arms, the sparkling amber wine:
And then another day, another hunger;
Snow on the boughs and on the faces anger
Who stare through evenings where no lanterns shine…………..

Somewhere a town lies burned, a great man dying,
A woman stabbed, a nun drowned in a stream:
All men are fragments of a broken dream,
No life is pure or strong,
I hear them crying:

Worlds, worlds, ground out of a world’s desire
Forever moving, forever unfulfilled
Circling about that ancient and unstilled
Lake which is now indeed a lake of fire!

Violence of thrones and treachery of empires,
Victories, mutilations, monuments,
Rain on the trenches and the dirty tents,

The small man burning in the great man’s fires.

O, dreams mean desolation,
Dreams mean grief
I know:
And still with energy and love
I dream that like Magellan I might move
Through straits and wishes to some vast belief