The ghosts of words and dusty dreams,
⁠Old memories, faiths infirm and dead.
Ye fools; for which among you deems
⁠His prayer can alter green to red
⁠Or stones to bread?

Why should ye bear with hopes and fears
⁠Till all these things be drawn in one,
The sound of iron-footed years,
⁠And all the oppression that is done
⁠Under the sun?

Ye might end surely, surely pass
⁠Out of the multitude of things,
Under the dust, beneath the grass,
⁠Deep in dim death, where no thought stings,
⁠No record clings.

No memory more of love or hate,
⁠No trouble, nothing that aspires,
No sleepless labour thwarting fate,
⁠And thwarted; where no travail tires,
⁠Where no faith fires.

All passes, nought that has been is,
⁠Things good and evil have one end.
Can anything be otherwise
⁠Though all men swear all things would mend
⁠With God to friend?