THE tiny thing of painted gauze that flutters in the sun
And sinks upon the breast of night with all its living done;

The unconsidered seed that from the garden blows away,
Blooming its little time to bloom in one short summer day;

The leaf the idle wind shakes down in autumn from the tree,
The grasshopper who for an hour makes gayest minstrelsy--

These--and this restless soul of mine--are one with flaming spheres
And cold, dead moons whose ghostly fires haunt unremembered years.

More verses by Isabel Ecclestone Mackay