Shapes of Clay

Horas non numero nisi serenas.

The rain is fierce, it flogs the earth,

And man's in danger.

O that my mother at my birth

Had borne a stranger!

The flooded ground is all around.

The depth uncommon.

How blest I'd be if only she

Had borne a salmon.

If still denied the solar glow

'T were bliss ecstatic

To be amphibious—but O,

To be aquatic!

We're worms, men say, o' the dust, and they

That faith are firm of.

O, then, be just: show me some dust

To be a worm of.

The pines are chanting overhead

A psalm uncheering.

It's O, to have been for ages dead

And hard of hearing!

Restore, ye Pow'rs, the last bright hours

The dial reckoned;

'Twas in the time of Egypt's prime—

Rameses II.