. . . Digging out treason from beneath me,
Something of life I end, by ending mecum-vade,
Composed of a hundred pearls and threaded –
Logically as tear flows into tear one into another;
I halt my pen . . . before . . . before
Impatient reader halts his reading:
I softly close the book’s cover, like a cell door – –
*
Thus a botanist having completed his book of plants immortal
– After he has, with lowly moss’s smallest leaf
Whispered of natural death – wants on the front sheath
Of the book to pen his name . . . he signs . . . a mortal!