Flower o' the thorn :: :: University of Virginia Library

THE eager earth hath drunk our heart's blood; on our sweat,
Our tears, our loves, our strifes, it fattened hath; and yet
No funeral stone it rears, to show the passers-by
That a man's murdered hopes beneath it buried lie.

The sea of Time hath whelmed the city of our hope;
Turret and tower beneath its grey unwrinkled scope
Lie drowned; and yet no sight of bower or sound of bell
There comes, of all that it hath swallowed up to tell.

The skies, that lured us on to sufferance with their smiles,
That beckoned us to wreck and ruin with their wiles,
Bend o'er our graves to-day their griefless brows of blue
Nor to our memories shed a single tear of dew.

Where are the weeping weeds, the burning blood-red flowers,
Earth should for harvest bear of all our blighted hours?
There, in the April sun, the August moon, it sleeps,
As if no myriad hearts lay rotting in its deeps.

Where are the piteous plaints, the thrilling threnodies,
That chanted o'er our heads should be of waves and breeze?
Where are the high sad songs of love and sympathy,
To our rememorance intoned of winds and sea?

Where are the temples high, the marble monuments,
The spires that to the skies should lift a world's laments,
The signs to show that one, who suffered, sought and sighed
For what is not for man, here dared and dreamed and died?

Where are the praising priests, the mourning maiden-throngs,
Hymning our passion past with high symphonious songs?
Where are the choirs to cast commemorative flowers?
If triumph not, at least, compassion should be ours.

Where have the heavens hid the Islands of the Blest,
That, for our heart's deceit, they showed us in the West?
Where are the giant thoughts, that, shining from afar,
They told us, should in air create another star?

Where are the mountain-paths, the sky-ascending stairs,
Whereby we hoped to reach the Heaven of our prayers?
The soaring stairs abide; the paths are there to tread:
But where's the God, the Heaven, to which they should have led?

Alas! We lived and hoped and suffered have in vain,
Since none and nothing have remembrance of our pain.
None laughs us e'en to scorn, so wholly we're forgot.
Who scoffs, indeed, at those whom he remembers not?

What profits us to do? What worth is there in strife,
Since our remembrance all must perish with our life,
Since no memorial we on Time's unstable tide
May leave to tell the tale of how we lived and died?

Love leads us on to live and other lives beget,
Engaging the To-Be to pay the Present's debt,
And blinds us to the law etern, by which we live,
That we for each new life a part of ours must give.

The flower, that barren bides, may flourish out its time;
But that which runs to seed must perish in its prime:
And we, we love and give our lives, that others may
The same round run of grief, when we are passed away.

About us in the air is many a sightless star,
That this our pin-point earth out-flourished once by far,
And many a burnt-out sun, by which what now we name
Our sun in Heaven above were but a taper's flame.

All, with their myriad lives, their glories and their griefs,
Have run their round in Space and wrecked upon Time's reefs,
Have given up the ghost and yield to others must,
That in His furnace-fires are moulded of their dust.

The eternal question runs on all the tongues of men,
What is the aim of Life? How many, now as then,
With blood and tears have sought and perished, asking, “Why,
Why are we born, if we and all the world must die?

Why do we love, if Love the maw of Death must feed?
Why flower, since Death twin-born with Life is in each seed?
Why do we live, since all that ever lived have died,
Since even the sun above must perish in his pride?”

In all the sounds of earth the eternal question's rife,
“What is the aim of Love? What is the end of Life?”
The impassive answer comes, the tale of Time, that saith,
“The aim of Love is Life; the end of Life is Death.”