The great and the little weavers, <br /> They neither rest nor sleep. <br /> They work in the height and the glory, <br /> They toil in the dark and the deep. <br /> The rainbow melts with the shower, <br /> The white-thorn falls in the gust, <br /> The cloud-rose dies into shadow, <br /> The earth-rose dies into dust. <br /> But they have not faded forever, <br /> They have not flowered in vain, <br /> For the great and the little weavers <br /> Are weaving under the rain. <br /> <br /> Recede the drums of the thunder <br /> When the Titan chorus tires, <br /> And the bird-song piercing the sunset <br /> Faints with the sunset fires, <br /> <br /> But the trump of the storm shall fail not, <br /> Nor the flute-cry fail of the thrush, <br /> For the great and the little weavers <br /> Are weaving under the hush. <br /> <br /> The comet flares into darkness, <br /> The flame dissolves into death, <br /> The power of the star and the dew <br /> They glow and are gone like a breath, <br /> <br /> But ere the old wonder is done <br /> Is the new-old wonder begun, <br /> For the great and the little weavers <br /> Are weaving under the sun. <br /> <br /> The domes of an empire crumble, <br /> A child's hope dies in tears; <br /> Time rolls them away forgotten <br /> In the silt of the flooding years; <br /> <br /> The creed for which men died smiling <br /> Decays to a beldame's curse; <br /> The love that made lips immortal <br /> Drags by in a tattered hearse. <br /> <br /> But not till the search of the moon <br /> Sees the last white face uplift, <br /> And over the bones of the kindreds <br /> The bare sands dredge and drift, <br /> <br /> Shall Love forget to return <br /> And lift the unused latch, <br /> (In his eyes the look of the traveller, <br /> On his lips the foreign catch), <br /> <br /> Nor the mad song leave men cold, <br /> Nor the high dream summon in vain, -- <br /> For the great and the little weavers <br /> Are weaving in heart and brain.<br /><br />Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-great-and-little-weavers/
