 | The Collected Poems of Lord De Tabley |  |
Orestes
ORESTES
Now is my day well wasted: I have joy
To see the end: I am well tired of this.
Yet I have purpose in me ere I go.
I can reach in my hand, and stifle down
Some of the earth's confusions, and so sleep.
I do suppose all will be well some day,
And that each individual agony
Helps on the world's perfection: that this stale
And aching sorrow will in after years
Seem to the hearers of my tale no more
Than a girl's laugh: well, be it, I am weary:
Let me drink deep of night. There is no thing
Like shame down yonder—O my mother comes,—
Something I have to speak, to do may be,
And then this gracious garment of the light,
Rent once asunder, black and swift flows in
The silence.
ORESTES
Now is my day well wasted: I have joy
To see the end: I am well tired of this.
Yet I have purpose in me ere I go.
249
Some of the earth's confusions, and so sleep.
I do suppose all will be well some day,
And that each individual agony
Helps on the world's perfection: that this stale
And aching sorrow will in after years
Seem to the hearers of my tale no more
Than a girl's laugh: well, be it, I am weary:
Let me drink deep of night. There is no thing
Like shame down yonder—O my mother comes,—
Something I have to speak, to do may be,
And then this gracious garment of the light,
Rent once asunder, black and swift flows in
The silence.
| The Collected Poems of Lord De Tabley | |