If any God should will
                To wipe from mind
            The memory of this ill
                Which is mankind
In soul and substance now—who would not bless
Even to tears His loving-tenderness?

            If any God should give
                Us leave to fly
            These present deaths we live,
                And safely die
In those lost lives we lived ere we were born—
What man but would not laugh the excuse to scorn?

            For we are what we are—
                So broke to blood
            And the strict works of war—
                So long subdued
To sacrifice, that threadbare Death commands
Hardly observance at our busier hands.

            Yet we were what we were,
                And, fashioned so,
            It pleases us to stare
                At the far show
Of unbelievable years and shapes that flit,
In our own likeness, on the edge of it.