On the Thought of Death (2)

[ZaunköniG]

I

If it is thou whose casual hand withdraws
What it at first as casually did make,
Say what amount of ages it will take,
With tardy rare concurrences of laws
And subtle multiplicities of cause,
The thing they once had made us to remake;
May hopes dead slumbering dare to reawake
Even after utmost interval of pause,
What revolutions must have passed before
The great celestial cycles shall restore
The starry sign whose present hour is gone;
What worse than dubious chances interpose,
With cloud and sunny gleam to recompose
The skiey picture we had gazed upon.



II

That children in their loveliness should die
Before the dawning beauty, which we know
Cannot remain, has yet begun to go;
That when a certain period has passed by,
People of genius and of faculty,
Leaving behind them some result to show
Having performed some function, should forgo
The task which younger hands can better ply,
Appears entirely natural.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - But that one
Whose perfectness did not at all consist
In things towards forming which time can have done
Anything--whose sole office was to exist--
Should suddenly dissolve and cease to be
Is the extreme of all perplexity.