Page:The Complete Poems of Francis Ledwidge, 1919.djvu/154

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148
A DREAM OF ARTEMIS

Our mortal hearts know beauty, and overblow,
And we are dust upon some passing wind,
Dust and a memory. But for you the snow
That so long cloaks the mountains to the knees
Is no more than a morning. It doth go
And summer comes, and leaf upon the trees:
Still you are fair and young, and nothing find
In all man's story that seems long ago.
I have not loved on Earth the strife for gold,
Nor the great name that makes immortal man,
But all that struggle upward to behold
What still is left of Beauty undisgraced,
The snowdrop at the heel of winter cold

And shivering, and the wayward cuckoo chased