And now begins my one true white child-time,
This time of desolate altars and all ruins.
For Pan is dead and the altars are in ruins.
"The world is full of endings for me, I find,
Emotions lost, and words and thoughts forgotten.
Yet amid all these last things, there is one,
But one Beginning, a seed within my soul.
Come quickly! and go by quickly, O my years!
Strip me of things and thoughts; as I have seen
The ilex changing leaves; for day by day
A little innocent life grows in my life,
A little ignorant life i' the world-worn life;
And I become a child with a world to learn,
Timorous, with another world to learn,
Timorous, younger, whiter towards my death."
She turned to the strange sea that five long years
Had sent her letters of his misty winds,
Bearing a cry of storms in other lands,
And songs of mariners singing over seas;
And having long conjectured of his face,
Seeing his face, paused, thinking of the past.
