Life Everlasting
And will you hear the proof now
Of immortality?
An old English tinker
Is come to life in me.
His feet were on the highroad
When buds and bees were young;
Many a traveller since then
Has hummed the songs he sung.
He wakened to the bird notes
We hear through window bars-
Vagrant son of the countryside,
Who slept under the stars.
He sat beneath the hedgerows
To eat his bread and cheese-
Every English springtime
Is built of things like these.
I cannot leave off wondering
That such a one as he,
With all the world to choose from,
Should come to live in me.
Structure
20 lines · 5 stanzas