Behold him lie in beauty and in vigor,
The seventh sleeper! all the rest awakened;
Behold the wingèd hours are flitting by him
With flutter, and with music on their pinions!
Beautiful hang the dews beside the highway,
The bitter highway where the sad have fallen;
Beautiful shine the blossoms of the dawning,
But droop their heads before the blaze of noontide,
While yet he sleeps and may not be awakened.
Morning and noonday and the dews of even,
Evening and midnight and the dews of morning,
Find him yet sleeping in the tremulous shadow,
Where oak-leaves whisper to the breeze above him.
Soft are his limbs and white as foam in moonlight,
Nor know they aught of change or earth's decaying,
Since Gabriel, the angel, lifts them often.

We are but shades and wait not the arousing:
Pass on; he must awaken like those others
To find them gone, alas! he knows not whither.
What can avail the beauty of the creature!
All else is born of change; the words are dying,
The youths his childhood knew have passed to silence,
And the old words no longer are remembered.