Statues
Kathleen Raine

They more than we are what we are:
Serenity and joy
We lost or never found,
The forms of heart's desire,
We gave them what we could not keep;
We made them what we cannot be.

Their kingdom is our dream, but who can say
If they or we
Are dream or dreamer, signet or clay?
If the most perfect be most true,
These faces pure,
these bodies poised in thought
Are substance of our form
And we the confused shadows cast.

Growing toward their prime they take our years away,
And from our deaths they rise
Immortal in the life we lose.
The gods consume us, but restore
More than we were:
We love, that they may be,
They are, that we may know.