Page:Mercure de France tome 004 1892 page 208.jpg

Dust unto dust ? Ye are the dust of Time,
 Immortals, whose mortality is o'er;
 Names writ in water once — now evermore
Carved on remembering hearts in gold of rhyme.

What though above your heads the pantomime
 Of vulgar traffic clash with daily roar?
 'Tis the same load in life your spirits bore,
The world's indifference to souls sublime.

So all mankind moves on with ceaseless tread,
 Tho' the far goal yon mystic shadow bars,
 Along a road whose dust is heroes' lives.

Sacred no less the soil, than overhead
 That highway to whose end no sight arrives,
 A riven road ablaze with dust of stars.

Perhaps, who knows, the hurrying throng
 Had hopeless signs for him;
I fancy how he wandered long
 Until the light grew dim.

The windows saw him come and pass,
 And come and go again;
And still the throng swept by—alas!
 The barren face of men.

And when the day was gone, the way
 Led down to the lethal deeps:
Sweet Life, what requiem to say?
 'Tis well, 'tis well, he sleeps.