Far Above The Shaken Tree Poem by Digby Mackworth Dolben

Far above the shaken trees,
In the pale blue palaces,
Laugh the high gods at their ease:
We with tossèd incense woo them,
We with all abasement sue them,
But shall never climb unto them,
Nor see their faces.


Sweet my sister, Queen of Hades,
Where the quiet and the shade is,
Of the cruel deathless ladies
Thou art pitiful alone.
Unto thee I make my moan,
Who the ways of earth hast known
And her green places.


Feed me with thy lotus-flowers,
Lay me in thy sunless bowers,
Whither shall the heavy hours
Never trail their hated feet,
Making bitter all things sweet;
Nevermore shall creep to meet
The perished dead.


There 'mid shades innumerable,
There in meads of asphodel,
Sleeping ever, sleeping well,
They who toiled and who aspired,
They, the lovely and desired,
With the nations of the tired
Have made their bed.


There is neither fast nor feast,
None is greatest, none is least;
Times and orders all have ceased.
There the bay-leaf is not seen;
Clean is foul and foul is clean;
Shame and glory, these have been
But shall not be.


When we pass away in fire,
What is found beyond the pyre?
Sleep, the end of all desire.
Lo, for this the heroes fought;
This the gem the merchant bought,
This the seal of laboured thought
And subtilty.