Where Is Perfection? Where I Cannot Reach.

It Is A Modest Creed, And Yet Pleasant If One Considers It, To Own That Death Itself Must Be, Like All The Rest, A Mockery.

Power, Like A Desolating Pestilence, Pollutes Whatever It Touches.

I Am The Daughter Of Earth And Water, And The Nursling Of The Sky; I Pass Through The Pores Of The Ocean And Shores; I Change, But I Cannot Die. For After The Rain When With Never A Stain The Pavilion Of Heaven Is Bare, And The Winds And Sunbeams With Their Convex Gleams Build Up The Blue Dome Of Air, I Silently Laugh At My Own Cenotaph, And Out Of The Caverns Of Rain, Like A Child From The Womb, Like A Ghost From The Tomb, I Arise And Unbuild It Again.

Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, And Endurance, These Are The Seals Of That Most Firm Assurance Which Bars The Pit Over Destruction's Strength; And If, With Infirm Hand, Eternity, Mother Of Many Acts And Hours, Should Free The Serpent That Would Clasp Her With His Length; These Are The Spells By Which To Reassume An Empire O'er The Disentangled Doom.

Woe Is Me! The Winged Words On Which My Soul Would Pierce Into The Heights Of Love's Rare Universe, Are Chains Of Lead Around Its Flight Of Fire-- I Pant, I Sink, I Tremble, I Expire.