WHEN blood was in my heart like wine
I crept beneath a branching pine;
With passion drank the piny breath
And no thought further then than death.

Now blood is colder and instead
I mind the liquor of the head,
Wherein I see, as in a glass,
The pine decay, the season pass.

And I have known, with sudden sight,
A shadow from the pine like night,
And sorrowing breezes, verse by verse,
Lament above the spirit's hearse;

And found some comfort, but not all,
Where the red needles wove a pall,
To mark through that dead carpet shine
The promise of a seedling pine.