The Cupbearer

The beauty of the world but runs to waste, For sunrise after sunrise comes and goes And leaves no trace of all its splendour gone, And sunset after sunset, like the sea We cross in dreams to reach the gates of God, Ebbs far and farther, and is seen no more; Night through her billowy clouds upswings the moon And blurs the dark with flying mists of light, Or bares her fathomless deeps of slumbrous calm And silent hollows pebbled thick with stars, But fades and is forgotten of the day; And love and hope and joy and youth, and all The bloom of life and sweetness of the year

Flows past us ever to its bourne of death, Sings like a stream adown its sunny hill And sighs through sunless places of the vale, Its depths and shallows glimmering strangely flecked With shadowed gloom and glory of earth and heaven, Slips from our touch and flashes out of sight.

And even as it passes and is lost-- Ere yet it spills into the sunset sea That far-off murmurs by the gates of God-- The immortal Hebe captive among men, Art dips her golden cup into the stream And lifts the living water to our lips That we may taste how sweet is all we lose.