The Difference

The brevity of life does not concern
The fluting oriole
Or cunning spider, measuring her thread,
Or mouse or velvet mole.

Life's full of ecstasy for everything
That has its birth, that dies;
For buds that break in petals, young fir trees;
For gnats and dragon flies.

And only man seems strangely out of tune.
Though nurtured anxiously,
His joys slip by and leave him but his dreams
Of immortality.

Kansas Poets
Edited by May William Ward
(New York: Henry Harrison. 1935)
Page 19