Life and Art
You have sweet flowers for your pleasure;
You laugh with the bountiful earth
In its richness of summer treasure:
Where now are your flowers and your mirth?
Petals and cadenced laughter,
Each in a dying fall,
Droop out of life; and after
Is nothing; they were all.
But we from the death of roses
That three suns perfume and gild
With a kiss, till the fourth discloses
A withered wreath, have distilled
The fulness of one rare phial,
Whose nimble life shall outrun
The circling shadow on the dial,
Outlast the tyrannous sun.
This poem is in the public domain.
First published in Leda (Chatto & Windus, 1920).
Aldous Huxley
Born in Godalming, England, on July 26, 1894, Aldous Leonard Huxley was a novelist, essayist, playwright, and poet. Early in his career he wrote short stories and poetry, and edited the magazine Oxford Literature. He later went on to write twelve novels, which include Crome Yellow (Chatto & Windus, 1921), Point Counter Point (Chatto & Windus, 1928), Brave New World (Chatto & Windus, 1932), and Island (Chatto & Windus, 1962).