The Book of Jade · Part I · Consolation

Among all sorrows that my heart hath known,

Among all sorrows that my spirit keep

Forever buried ’neath their mountains steep,

Standeth one consolation, one alone.

I know that earth shall be for death a throne,

And evermore within their burials deep

The banded nations of the earth shall sleep,

Sunken in sepulchres of sculptur’d stone.

Then all the world shall be a quietness:

Dead women beautiful with their delights;

All they that had such striving and distress,

And endless weariness in all the lands,

White faces, eager heart-strings, soiled hands;

And peace shall hold the valleys and the heights.