 | The Way of the Winepress |  |
GLOSSA MARGINALIS
1
IN days of old,When Right yet Right was titled and Wrong Wrong,
Before both yet
Together were confounded in the eclipse
Of Faith and Truth, that swept the world along;
Before the ever-waxing fume and fret,
The over-mastering empery of gold,
The queens of beauty loved the kings of song.
Then Marguerite kissed Chartier on the lips
And Rudel on the breast of Melisande
Died; for the minstrel and the bard of yore
In hut and hall and palace still was graced
And all the loveliest ladies in the land
His love for jewel in their bosoms placed
And wore.
2
But, nowadays,When Love and Faith are dreams discredited
And the waste world
94
Toward the abysses of the Place of Dread
Along the resonant rails of Time is hurled,
And Life gropes, darkling, in the lightless ways,
The love of song in women's hearts is dead;
Rapine and vanity in them the need
Of more than meat and wine and wede have slain.
Driven by our whirl of greed and stress and strife,
To-day the fair care only for the brute
And on the minstrel look with dull disdain:
None heeds the flower; all only seek the fruit
Of Life.
| The Way of the Winepress | |