THE SWAN

This heaviness, toiling on as if in bonds

through a landscape of things still undone,

is like the makeshift walking of the swan.

And dying—to feel slowly giving way

that ground on which we daily stand,

like his uneasy lowering of himself—:

into the water, which received him gently

and which, so serene in its passing,

withdraws beneath him, wave on wave;

while he, infinitely still and sure,

with ever greater confidence and kingship

and self-possession deigns to glide.