Poem by Arthur William Symons

At Toledo

The little stones chuckle against the fields:
'We are so small: God will not think of us;
We are so old already, we have seen
So many generations blunt their ploughs,
Tilling the fields we lie in; and we dream
Of our first sleep among the ancient hills.'
The grass laughs, thinking: 'I am born and die,
And born and die, and know not birth or death,
Only the going on of the green earth.'
The rivers pass and pass, and are the same,
And I, who see the beauty of the world,
Pass, and am not the same, or know it not,
And know the world no more. O is not this
Some horrible conspiracy of things,
That I have known and loved and lingered with
All my days through, and now they turn like hosts
Who have grown tired of a delaying guest?
They cast me out from their eternity:
God is in league with their forgetfulness. 

1. Pastel: Masks and Faces
2. Grey Hours: Naples
3. At Glan-y-Wern
4. Behind the Scenes: Empire
5. The Andante of Snakes

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