ASPIRATIONS
O human dreams unrealisable!
Fire-tinged, gemmated, luring, damning dreams,
Born but to shame the everlasting soul,
Caged in its flesh-bound dungeon! Dreams of beauty,
Growing to sinhood, fruits of seed-thoughts,
Fallen in times primordial from the Godhead,
Sweet with almighty innocence, divine
With ignorance of nakedness and form,
To germinate on life’s warm flesh and live
In many purple passions! Such your dreams,
O man, from Genesis to Revelation!
The harlot and the harlequin are types
Of your desires; her love is like his garb,
Motley and false. Then sweep your pantheons
Clean of these cobwebs. In the crystal disc,
By which the hag Philosophy slumbers,
Behold the play.
The nubile maiden seeks
Mad stars that dance at night in lonely wells.
A withered pope mumbling his benediction,
Urbi et orbi, is absorbed the while
With thoughts of Rome eternal, his by right,
Now lost to God and him, because the king’s.
And so the peaceful blessing wavers, dies
E’er it has even drifted o’er the town—
Alas! then, for the world.
A graceful girl,
Royal with the pageantry of silk and ermine,
Cursed with the name of Highness, brow ablaze
With diamonds, cutting deep into the skin,
Passes with dewy lips and swooning eyes,
Some stalwart soldier of her bodyguard.
The young man slowly dying in a ward,
Sees, with the envious smile of bankrupt life,
The pretty nurse who hovers round his bed
With all life’s restless rustle in her skirts.
O, who shall ever sing, O tortured man,
The Babylons of your imagination,
The castles built on clouds, the women loved
In thought, the frantic thirst for beauteous life,
Your wild despairs at every wreck, as Death
Draws ever near to cool your red-hot soul
For an eternity of peace!