I am alone--alone;
There is nothing--only I,
And, when I will to die,
All must be gone.
Eternal thought in me
Puts on the dress of time
And builds a stage to mime
Its listless tragedy.
And in that dress of time
And on that stage of space
I place, change, and replace
Life to a wilful rime.
I summon at my whim
All things that are, that were:
The high incredible air,
Where stars--my creatures--swim.
I dream, and from my mind
The dead, the living come;
I build a marble Rome,
I give it to the wind.
Athens and Babylon
I breathe upon the night,
Troy towers for my delight
And crumbles stone by stone.
I change with white and green
The seasons hour by hour;
I think--it is a flower,
Think--and the flower has been.
Men, women, things, a stream
That wavers and flows by,
A lonely dreamer, I
Build and cast down the dream.
And one day weary grown
Of all my brain has wrought,
I shall destroy my thought
And I and all be gone.