Before the beginning of years
There came the making of man
Time, with a gift of tears;
Grief, with a glass that ran;
Pleasure, with pain for leaven;
Summer, with flowers that fell;
Remembrance, fallen from heaven,
And madness risen from hell;
Strength without hands to smite;
Love that endures for a breath;
As night is the shadow of light,
And Life, the shadow of death.
Be still, be strong,
Your beauty never slumbers;
All is in her name;
But the rose remembers
The dust from which it came.