A pageant of poets and other poems By James Chapman Woods |
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| 19. | 19 WILLIAM MORRIS |
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 | A pageant of poets and other poems |  |
19
19
WILLIAM MORRIS
Adown Epicurean garden paths,
Fresh with keen scents, with unsunned dewfall wet,
We follow thee, new Chaucer of our time,
By meadows where the scythe gleams through the swathes,
While garrulous elders in the shadows met
Recount their haunting legends of the Prime,
And Sagas, smitten through with Berserk wraths;
Or in a mist of unforbidden tears
Breathe forth the sorrowful mandate of the years:—
Fresh with keen scents, with unsunned dewfall wet,
We follow thee, new Chaucer of our time,
By meadows where the scythe gleams through the swathes,
While garrulous elders in the shadows met
Recount their haunting legends of the Prime,
And Sagas, smitten through with Berserk wraths;
Or in a mist of unforbidden tears
Breathe forth the sorrowful mandate of the years:—
Glean in this fleeting aftermath of day
What tender joys we may.
No profit shall we reap from all our toil.
But once we live and all too soon we die;
Live now; the night is nigh;
Vain is our labour, vain the wild turmoil,
The thrashing of the seas, the endless strife:
Death ends the pain, the song;
Wipes out alike the memory and the wrong,
The dream, the deed; hoard what is left of life!
Not so; the palaces of Song endure:
What tender joys we may.
No profit shall we reap from all our toil.
But once we live and all too soon we die;
Live now; the night is nigh;
Vain is our labour, vain the wild turmoil,
The thrashing of the seas, the endless strife:
Death ends the pain, the song;
Wipes out alike the memory and the wrong,
The dream, the deed; hoard what is left of life!
When Time hath set his fluttering captive free,
There reigns the soul, remote, intact, secure,
In its own fabric of Eternity.
| A pageant of poets and other poems | |