Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

AN END by ROSE TERRY COOKE

Poet Analysis

First Line: I HAVE HAD ALL: OVER AND IN THAT ALL
Last Line: FILLS STAR AND SOD.
I have had all: over and in that all,
Like the soul's speck of fire in a man's eye,
One little mote did crawl
And spread and fly, till wide eternity
Straightened itself to measure out a pall
Where I might lie.

Life tempted me, as the great hungry sea
Calls with inevitable voice to youth:
Why should I turn and flee?
Nor fear, nor ruth, nor the still voice of truth
Kept the red wine or bitter lees from me:
I lived, forsooth!

All things of earth in sequence of their birth
Sprang to my fevered lips and met disdain,
Mad in its angry mirth.
Love's honeyed gain was the bee's patient pain,
Wrought for no worth.
I have had all. I had it all in vain!

As in the cup where the brown night-moths sup,
Under the honey, under the perfume,
One little spot looks up,
And through that bloom foretells the seed-time's gloom,
So my unsated thirst in each drained cup
Found lurking room.

Yet I know God hung over me this rod
That I should follow where two bleeding feet
Before this track have trod:
And, as earth's sweet is finite, incomplete,
He satisfies me whose infinite, complete,
Fills star and sod.



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