"Before the beginning of years

There came to the making of man

Time, with a gift of tears;

Grief, with a glass that ran;

Pleasure, with pain for leaven;

Summer, with flowers that fell;

Remembrance fallen from heaven,

And madness risen from hell;

Strength without hands to smite;

Love that endures for a breath;

Night, the shadow of light.

And life, the shadow of death.

And the high gods took in hand

Fire, and the falling of tears.

And a measure of sliding sand

From under the feet of the years;

And froth and drift of the sea;

And dust of the labouring earth;

And bodies of things to be

in the houses of death and of birth

And wrought with weeping and laughter,

And fashioned with loathing and love,

With life before and after

And death beneath and above,

For a day and a night and a morrow,

That his strength might endure for a span

With travail and heavy sorrow.

The holy spirit of man."-Swinburne.