Death came to the earth, by his side was Spring,
They came from God's own bowers,
And the earth was full of their wandering,
For they both were sowing flowers.

"I sow," said Spring, "by the stream and the wood,
And the village children know
The gay glad time of my own sweet prime,
And where my blossoms grow.

"There is not a spot in the quiet wood
But hath heard the sound of my feet,
And the violets come from their solitude
When my tears have made them sweet."

"I sow," said Death, "where the hamlet stands,
I sow in the churchyard drear;
I drop in the grave with gentle hands,
My flowers from year to year.

"The young and the old go into their rest,
To the sleep that awaits them below;
But I clasp the children unto my breast,
And kiss them before I go."

"I sow," said Spring, "but my flowers decay
When the year turns weak and old,
When the breath of the bleak wind wears them away,
And they wither and droop in the mould.

"But they come again when the young earth feels
The new blood leap in her veins,
When the fountain of wonderful life unseals,
And the earth is alive with the rains."

"I sow," said Death; "but my flowers unseen
Pass away from the land of men,
Nor sighs nor tears through the long sad years
Ever bring back their bloom again.

"But I know they are wondrous bright and fair
In the fields of their high abode;
Your flowers are the flowers that a child may wear,
But mine are the blossoms of God."

Death came to the earth, by his side was Spring;
The two came from God's own bowers;
One sowed in night and the other in light,
Yet they both were sowing flowers.

The king is dead who planned these terraces;
The turf has grown to meadow-grass again;
The lake is rank beneath the untended trees,
And down the mouldering statues drips the rain.

The king is dead. Ay, he, with all his kind,
Is absolutely vanished, lost, and gone,
And not a trace of him remains behind;
But the forsaken palace lingers on.

How desolate! The weary waters drowned
In mist, the empty alleys chill and frore,
The vast and melancholy pleasure-ground
Where the forgotten monarch comes no more.

How like an older Folly, planned no less
For beauty, where a greater monarch trod,
And now, grown old, in its extreme distress
Abandoned by the long-departed God!