The Giant Puffball

From what sad star I know not, but I found         Myself new-born below the coppice rail,     No bigger than the dewdrops and as round,         In a soft sward, no cattle might assail.     And so I gathered mightiness and grew         With this one dream kindling in me, that I     Should never cease from conquering light and dew         Till my white splendour touched the trembling sky.     A century of blue and stilly light         Bowed down before me, the dew came again,     The moon my sibyl worshipped through the night,         The sun returned and long abode; but then     Hoarse drooping darkness hung me with a shroud         And switched at me with shrivelled leaves in scorn.     Red morning stole beneath a grinning cloud,         And suddenly clambering over dike and thorn     A half-moon host of churls with flags and sticks         Hallooed and hurtled up the partridge brood,     And Death clapped hands from all the echoing thicks,         And trampling envy spied me where I stood;     Who haled me tired and quaking, hid me by,         And came again after an age of cold,     And hung me in the prison-house adry         From the great crossbeam. Here defiled and old     I perish through unnumbered hours, I swoon,         Hacked with harsh knives to staunch a child's torn hand;     And all my hopes must with my body soon         Be but as crouching dust and wind-blown sand.