Ah! fragrance of human love exhaled!

Great clouds from frail and perishable forms escaping silently,

Into the night, into the vast aerial night of Time!

The little flash of youth, the reaching of hands to hands, of hearts to hearts, of lips to lips,

The closing in of the outer shell, the chrysalis-death, and the terrible struggles for liberation;

The larvæ crawling the earth for a time—on hill-sides and in valleys, in huts and palaces—chained to their little plots of earth, their few frail feet of flesh;

The great thunderclouds passing over from snowy range to range, touching the little creatures with their shadows;

The great sun out of the unfathomable touching them too with his finger—breeding slowly but surely within them the life which must destroy their mortality.