All beneath a wintering sky

Follow the wastrel butterfly;

With vermilion leaf or bronze—

Tatters of gorgeous gonfalons—

With the winds that always hold

Echo of clarions lost and old,—

We must hasten, hasten on

Tow’rd the azure world withdrawn,

We must wander, wander so

Where the ruining roses go;

Where the poplar’s pallid leaves

Drift among the gathered sheaves

In that harvest none shall glean;

Where the twisted willows lean

In their strange, tormented woe,

Seeing, on the streamlet’s flow

Half their fragile leaves depart;

Where the secret pines at heart,

High, funereal, vespertine,

Guard eternal sorrows green:—

We shall follow, we shall find,

Haply, ere the light is blind,

The moulded place where Beauty lay,

Moon-beheld until the day,

In the woven windlestrae;

Or the pool of tourmaline,

Rimmed with golden reeds, that was

In the dawn a tiring-glass

For her undelaying mien.

Ever wander, wander so,

Where the ruining roses go;

All beneath a wintering sky,

Follow the wastrel butterfly.