It's "Gallop and go!" and "Slow, now, slow!"
With every man in this life below—
But the things of the world are a fleeting show.
The post-chaise Time that all must take
Is old with clay and dust;
Two horses strain its rusty brake
Named Pleasure and Disgust.
Our baggage totters on its roof,
Of Vanity and Care,
As Hope, the post-boy, spurs each hoof,
Or heavy-eyed Despair.
And now a comrade with us rides,
Love, haply, or Remorse;
And that dim traveler besides,
Gaunt Memory on a horse.
And be we king or be we kern
Who ride the roads of Sin,
No matter how the roads may turn
They lead us to that Inn:
Unto that Inn within that land
Of silence and of gloom,
Whose ghastly Landlord takes our hand
And leads us to our room.
It's "Gallop and go!" and "Slow, now, slow!"
With every man in this life below—
But the things of the world are a fleeting show.
DUM VIVIMUS
I
Now with the marriage of the lip and beaker
Let Joy be born! and in the rosy shine,
The slanting starlight of the lifted liquor,
Let Care, the hag, go drown! No more repine
At all life's ills! Come, bury them in wine!
Room for great guests! Yea, let us usher in
Philosophies of old Anacreon
And Omar, that, from dawn to glorious dawn,
Shall lesson us in love and song and sin.
II
Some lives need less than others.—Who can ever
Say truly "Thou art mine," of Happiness?
Death comes to all. And one, to-day, is never
Sure of to-morrow, that may ban or bless;
And what's beyond is but a shadowy guess.
"All, all is vanity," the preacher sighs;
And in this world what has more right than
Wrong?
Come! let us hush remembrance with a song,
And learn with folly to be glad and wise.
III
There was a poet of the East named Hâfiz,
Who sang of wine and beauty. Let us go
Praising them, too. And where good wine to quaff is
And maids to kiss, doff life's gray garb of woe;
For soon that tavern's reached, that inn, you know,
Where wine and love are not; where, sans disguise,
Each one must lie in his strait bed apart,
The thorn of sleep deep-driven in his heart,
And dust and darkness in his mouth and eyes.
FAILURE
There are some souls
Whose lot it is to set their hearts on goals
That adverse Fate controls.
While others win
With little labor through life's dust and din,
And lord-like enter in
Immortal gates;
And, of Success the high-born intimates,
Inherit Fame's estates....
Why is 't the lot
Of merit oft to struggle and yet not
Attain? to toil—for what?
Simply to know
The disappointment, the despair, and woe
Of effort here below?
Ambitious still to reach
Those lofty peaks, which men, aspiring, preach,
For which their souls beseech:
Those heights that swell
Remote, removed, and unattainable,
Pinnacle on pinnacle:
Still yearning to attain
Their far repose, above life's stress and strain,
But all in vain, in vain!...
Why hath God put
Great longings in some souls and straightway shut
All doors of their clay hut?
The clay accurst
That holds achievement back; from which, immersed,
The spirit may not burst.
Were it, at least;
Not better to have sat at Circe's feast,
If afterwards a beast?
THE CUP OF JOY
Let us mix a cup of Joy
That the wretched may employ,
Whom the Fates have made their toy.
Who have given brain and heart
To the thankless world of Art,
And from Fame have won no part.
Who have labored long at thought;
Starved and toiled and all for naught;
Sought and found not what they sought.
Let our goblet be the skull
Of a fool; made beautiful
With a gold nor base nor dull:
Gold of madcap fancies, once
It contained, that,—sage or dunce,—
Each can read whoever runs.
Let this be the must wherefrom,
In due time, the mettlesome
Care-destroying drink shall come.
Folly next: with which mix in
Laughter of a child of sin,
And the red of mouth and chin.
These shall give the tang thereto,
Effervescence and rich hue
Which to all good wine are due.
Then into our cup we press
One wild kiss of wantonness,
And a glance that says not less.
Sparkles both that give a fine
Lustre to the drink divine,
Necessary to good wine.
These bouquet our drink.—Now measure
With your arm the waist you treasure—
Lift the cup and drink to Pleasure.
LA JEUNESSE ET LA MORT
I
Unto her fragrant face and hair,—
As some wild-bee unto a rose,
That blooms in splendid beauty there
Within the South,—my longing goes:
My longing, that is overfain
To call her mine, but all in vain;
Since jealous Death, as each one knows,
Is guardian of La belle Heléne;
Of her whose face is very fair—
To my despair,
Ah, belle Heléne.
II
The sweetness of her face suggests
The sensuous scented Jacqueminots;
Magnolia blooms her throat and breasts;
Her hands, long lilies in repose:
Fair flowers all without a stain,
That grow for Death to pluck again,
Within that garden's radiant close.
The body of La belle Heléne;
The garden glad that she suggests,—
That Death invests,
Ah, belle Heléne.
III
God had been kinder to me,—when
He dipped His hands in fires and snows
And made you like a flower to ken,
A flower that in Earth's garden grows,—
Had He, for pleasure or for pain,
Instead of Death in that domain,
Made Love the gardener to that rose,
Your loveliness, O belle Heléne!
God had been kinder to me then—
Me of all men,
Ah, belle Heléne.
LOVE AND LOSS
Loss molds our lives in many ways,
And fills our souls with guesses;
Upon our hearts sad hands it lays
Like some grave priest that blesses.
Far better than the love we win,
That earthly passions leaven,
Is love we lose, that knows no sin,
That points the path to Heaven.
Love, whose soft shadow brightens Earth,
Through whom our dreams are nearest;
And loss, through whom we see the worth
Of all that we held dearest.
Not joy it is, but misery
That chastens us, and sorrow;—
Perhaps to make us all that we
Expect beyond To-morrow.
Within that life where time and fate
Are not; that knows no seeming:
That world to which Death keeps the gate
Where Love and Loss sit dreaming.
THE END OF ALL
I
I do not love you now,
O narrow heart, that had no heights but pride!
You, whom mine fed; to whom yours still denied
Food when mine hungered; and of which love died—
I do not love you now.
II
I do not love you now,
O shallow soul, with depths but to deceive!
You, whom mine watered; to whom yours did give
No drop to drink to help my love to live—
I do not love you now.
I do not love you now!
But did I love you in the old, old way,
And knew you loved me—'though the words should slay
Me and your love forever, I would say,
"I do not love you now!
I do not love you now!"
A ROSE O' THE HILLS
The hills look down on wood and stream
On orchard-land and farm;
And o'er the hills the azure-gray
Of heaven bends the livelong day,
And all the winds blow warm.
On wood and stream the hills look down,
On farm and orchard-land;
And o'er the hills she came to me
Through wildrose-brake and blackberry,
The hill-winds hand in hand.
The hills look down on home and field,
On wood and winding stream;
And o'er the hills she came along,
Upon her lips a wildwood song,
And in her eyes a dream.
On home and field the hills look down,
On stream and hill-locked wood;
And breast-deep, with disordered hair,
Fair in the wildrose tangle there,
A sudden while she stood.
O hills, that look on rock and road,
On grove and harvest-field,
To whom God giveth rest and peace,
And slumber, that is kin to these,
And visions unrevealed!
O hills, that look on road and rock,
On field and fruited grove,
No more shall I find peace and rest
In you, since entered in my breast
God's sweet unrest of love!
THE WHITE VIGIL
I
Last night I dreamed I saw you lying dead,
And by your sheeted form stood all alone:
Frail as a flower you lay upon your bed,
And on your face, through the wide casement, shone
The moonlight, pale as I, who kissed you there,
So young and fair, white violets in your hair.
Oh, sick with suffering was my soul; and sad
To breaking was my heart that would not break;
And for my soul's great grief no tear I had,
No lamentation for my heart's deep ache;
Yet what I bore seemed more than I could bear,
Beside you there, white violets in your hair.
A white rose, blooming at the window-bar,
And, glimmering in it, like a firefly caught
Upon the thorns, the light of one white star,
Looked in on you, as if they felt and thought,
As did my heart,—"How beautiful and fair
And young she lies, white violets in her hair!"
And so we looked upon you, white and still,
The star, the rose, and I. The moon had past,
Like a pale traveler, behind the hill
With all her sorrowful silver. And at last
Darkness and tears and you, who did not care,
Lying so still, white violets in your hair.
A STUDY IN GRAY
A woman, fair to look upon,
Where waters whiten with the moon;
Around whom, glimmering o'er the lawn,
The white moths swoon.
A mouth of music; eyes of love;
And hands of blended snow and scent,
That touch the pearly shadow of
An instrument.
And low and sweet that song of sleep
After the song of love is hushed;
While all the longing, here, to weep,
Is held and crushed.
Then leafy silence, that is musk
With breath of the magnolia tree,
While dwindles, moth-white, through the dusk
Her drapery.
Let me remember how a heart
Wrote its romance upon that night!—
God help my soul to read each part
Of it aright!
And like a dead leaf shut between
A book's dull chapters, stained and dark,
That page, with immemorial green,
Of life I mark.
II
It is not well for me to hear
That song's appealing melody:
The pain of loss comes all too near,
Through it, to me.
The loss of her whose love looks through
The mist death's hand hath hung between—
Within the shadow of the yew
Her grave is green.
Ah, dream that vanished long ago!
Oh, anguish of remembered tears!
And shadow of unlifted woe
Athwart the years!
That haunt the sad rooms of my days,
As keepsakes of unperished love,
Where pale the memory of her face
Hangs, framed above.
This olden song of love and sleep,
She used to sing, is now a spell
That opens doors within the deep
Of my heart's hell,
In music making visible
One soul-assertive memory,
That steals unto my side to tell
My loss to me.
AT VESPERS
High up in the organ-story
A girl stands, slim and fair;
And touched with the casement's glory
Gleams out her radiant hair.
The young priest kneels at the altar,
Then lifts the Host above;
And the psalm intoned from the psalter
Is pure with patient love.
A sweet bell chimes; and a censer
Swings, gleaming, in the gloom;
The candles glimmer and denser
Rolls up the pale perfume.
Then high in the organ choir
A voice of crystal soars,
Of patience and soul's desire,
That suffers and adores.
And out of the altar's dimness
An answering voice doth swell,
Of passion that cries from the grimness
And anguish of its own hell.
High up in the organ-story
One kneels with a girlish grace;
And, touched with the vesper glory,
Lifts her madonna face.
One stands at the cloudy altar,
A form bowed down and thin;
The text of the psalm in the psalter
He chants is sorrow and sin.