Oh, not the loss of the accomplished thing! <br />Not dumb farewells, nor long relinquishment <br />Of beauty had, and golden summer spent, <br />And savage glory of the fluttering <br />Torn banners of the rain, and frosty ring <br />Of moon-white winters, and the imminent <br />Long-lunging seas, and glowing students bent <br />To race on some smooth beach the gull's wing: <br /> <br />Not these, nor all we've been, nor all we've loved, <br />The pitiful familiar names, had moved <br />Our hearts to weep for them; but oh, the star <br />The future is! Eternity's too wan <br />To give again that undefeated, far, <br />All-possible irradiance of dawn. <br /> <br />Like moon-dark, like brown water you escape, <br />O laughing mouth, O sweet uplifted lips. <br />Within the peering brain old ghosts take shape; <br />You flame and wither as the white foam slips <br />Back from the broken wave: sometimes a start, <br />A gesture of the hands, a way you own <br />Of bending that smooth head above your heart,-- <br />Then these are varied, then the dream is gone. <br /> <br />Oh, you are too much mine and flesh of me <br />To seal upon the brain, who in the blood <br />Are so intense a pulse, so swift a flood <br />Of beauty, such unceasing instancy. <br />Dear unimagined brow, unvisioned face, <br />All beauty has become your dwelling place.<br /><br />Archibald MacLeish<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/two-poems-from-the-war/
