As a man and woman make a garden between them like a bed of stars, here they linger in the summer evening and the evening turns cold with their terror: it could all end, it is capable of devastation. All, all can be lost, through scented air the narrow columns uselessly rising, and beyond, a churning sea of poppies--

Hush, beloved. It doesn't matter to me how many summers I live to return: this one summer we have entered eternity. I felt your two hands bury me to release its splendor.

I live my life in widening rings which spread over earth and sky. I may not ever complete the last one, but that is what I will try.

I circle around God's primordial tower, and I circle ten thousand years long; And I still don't know if I'm a falcon, a storm, or an unfinished song

Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be, For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance, I have winced but not cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance, My head is bloodied but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears, Looms but the horror of the shade. And yet the menace of the years, Finds, and shall find me, unafraid

It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.