text: The ancient songs
  Pass deathward mournfully.
  
  Cold lips that sing no more, and withered wreaths,
  Regretful eyes, and drooping breasts and wings
  Symbols of ancient songs
  Mournfully passing
  Down to the great white surges,
  Watched of none         - -
  Save the frail sea-birds
  And the lithe pale girls,
  Daughters of Okeanos.
  
  And the songs pass
  From the green land
  Which lies upon the waves as a leaf
  On the flowers of hyacinth;
  And they pass from the waters,
  The manifold winds and the dim moon,
  And they come,
  Silently winging through soft Kimmerian dusk,
  To the quiet level lands
  That she keeps for us all,
  That she wrought for us all for sleep
  In the silver days of the earth's dawning
  Proserpine, daughter of Zeus.
  
  And we turn from the Kuprian's breasts,
  And we turn from thee,
  Phoibos Apollon,
  And we turn from the music of old
  And the hills that we loved and the meads,
  And we turn from the fiery day,
  And the lips that were over-sweet;
  For silently
  Brushing the fields with red-shod feet,
  With purple robe
  Searing the flowers as with a sudden flame,
  Death,
  Thou hast come upon us.
  
  And of all the ancient songs
  Passing to the swallow-blue halls
  By the dark streams of Persephone,
  This only remains:
  That in the end we turn to thee,
  Death,
  That we turn to thee, singing
  One last song.
  
  O Death,
  Thou art an healing wind
  That blowest over white flowers
  A-tremble with dew;
  Thou art a wind flowing
  Over long leagues of lonely sea;
  Thou art the dusk and the fragrance;
  Thou art the lips of love mournfully smiling;
  Thou art the pale peace of one
  Satiate with old desires;
  Thou art the silence of beauty,
  And we look no more for the morning;
  We yearn no more for the sun,
  Since with thy white hands,
  Death,
  Thou crownest us with the pallid chaplets,
  The slim colorless poppies
  Which in thy garden alone
  Softly thou gatherest.
  
  And silently;
  And with slow feet approaching;
  And with bowed head and unlit eyes,
  We kneel before thee:
  And thou, leaning towards us, Caressingly layest upon us
  Flowers from thy thin cold hands,
  And, smiling as a chaste woman Knowing love in her heart,
  Thou sealest our eyes
  And the illimitable quietude
  Comes gently upon us.