The Collected Works of William Morris :: :: University of Virginia Library

The dull day long had faded into night
Ere all was done; taper and red fire-light
Cast on the wall's fair painted images
Shadows confused of some, amidst of these,
The old men on the dais; down below
Amid the youths was stir and murmur now;
Some said they fain had known a little more
Of that Bellerophon ere all was o'er;
Some said, that if the man lived, sure it was
That happiness of his would soon o'erpass,
Because he kept back something of the stake:
Some said the story back their thoughts did take
To Argos, and the deeds there, and the end
Whereto the feet of Sthenobœa did wend
So surely from the first, not without praise
Of some, they said: some wondered of the days
That Prœtus had, and if the godlike man
And he, who clung to joy as cowards can,
E'er met again, and what things they forgat
And what remembered, if it came to that.

But one youth who had sat alone and sad,
While others friends and loves beside them had,
Rose up amid their talk, and slowly turned
To where the many lights that thereby burned
Scarce reached, and in that dimness walked awhile;
And when he came back, with a quivering smile
On his sad face, gazed at the elders there,
As though he deemed his place among them were,
Who had nigh done with life; and one or two
Among the youths looked up, as if they knew
The pain that ailed him.

Many-peopled earth!
In foolish anger and in foolish mirth,
In causeless wars that never had an aim,
In worshipping the kings that bring thee shame,
In spreading lies that hide wrath in their breast,
In breaking up the short-lived days of rest,—

279

—In all thy folk care nought for, how they cling
Each unto each, fostering the foolish thing,
Nought worth, grown out of nought, that lightly lies
'Twixt throat and lips, and yet works miseries!
While in this love that touches everyone,
Still wilt thou let each man abide alone,
Unholpen, with his pain unnameable!
Is it, perchance, lest men should come to tell
Each unto other what a pain it is,
How little balanced by the sullied bliss
They win for some few minutes of their life,—
Lest they die out and leave thee void of strife,
Empty of all their yearning and their fear,
'Twixt storm and sunshine of the changing year?