THEY LIVE SO LONG, a poem

THEY live so long, the Gods!
They know
What æons passed before a rose could blow;
What ages numberless, without a name,
Went out in darkness ere the saurian came,
A crawling dulness from the slime of Earth;
What further centuries with movement slow
Were borne along on Time's unebbing flow
Before the weakling man-child came to birth:
All this, and more, they know.

Our dates—how brief!
We cry:—
"Bless us to-day! to-morrow we shall die!"
Divided ever between hope and fear,
Warring with evil which we deem grows strong,
Our knowledge bounded by one little sphere,
We cannot share, for hope of good not nigh,
The peace of the unfathomable sky;
But the Gods patient be; they live so long,
And know that naught can die.

"They Live So Long" by Florence Earle Coates. Published in The Bellman (26 August 1916) and Poems (1916) Volume II.