Last Fires

    WHEN all the passion and the pain

    That forged our flesh and spirit one
Are past, and sweet desire is vain,
    And youth and hope and life are gone,

Will then our end be like the west,
    Where sunset fires have paled to gloom,
But give their gorgeous crimson’s best
    To light with splendour day’s long doom ?

Ah, then, when we must die, we two
    Claim the dear earth and solemn sky
As comrades in the way we go,
    From dawn to night’s dark mystery.