The air is like a butterfly With frail blue wings. The happy earth looks at the sky And sings.

Things have a terrible permanence when people die.

There is no peace to be taken With poets who are young, For they worry about the wars to be fought and the songs that must be sung.

What matters Death, if Freedom be not dead? No flags are fair, if Freedom's flag be furled. Who fights for Freedom, goes with joyful tread To meet the fires of Hell against him hurled.

In a wood they call the Rouge Bouquet, There is a new-made grave today, Built by never a spade nor pick, Yet covered with earth ten meteres thick. There lie many fighting men. Dead in their youthful prime.

The fairy poet takes a sheet Of moonbeam, silver white His ink is dew from daisies sweet, His pen a point of light.

It is stern work, it is perilous work, to thrust your hand in the sun And pull out a spark of immortal flame to warm the hearts of men: But Prometheus, torn by the claws and beaks whose task is never done, would be tortured another eternity to go stealing fire again.

They say that life is a highway and its milestones are the years,And now and then there's a toll-gate where you buy your way with tears.It's a rough road and a steep road and it stretches broad and far,But at last it leads to a golden Town where golden Houses are.

I think that I shall never scan A tree as lovely as a man. . . . . A tree depicts divinest plan, But God himself lives in a man.

For nothing keeps a poet In his high singing mood Like unappeasable hunger For unattainable food.