THE EVER CHANGING
BY ALICE BROWN
THREE things I know that greatly range
Through an infinitude of change:
The moving tumult of the sea,
Clouds limned in mutability,
That awful magic men call fire—
High priest at permanency's pyre—
Pulsing to coal and flowered in flame,
Yet never, through unnumbered years, the same.
A hand there was that hurled the sun
In his encircling road to run,
And drew the lineaments of those
Men call the lilac and the rose,
And set the crystals of the air
In form on form most brightly fair,
But wearied of the lasting line,
The form unaltered through the type divine.
O loveliness of lavishment!
O flower of godhead's discontent!
Dear ebb and flux of death and birth,
Tumultuous rhythm of air and earth,
Beauty pursued, herself pursuing,
In evanescence and renewing,
Vast, glad caprice of frolic will
Sporting with changes, yet unchanging still.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1927.
The author died in 1948, so this work is also in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 70 years or less. This work may also be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.