Carol and Cadence :: :: University of Virginia Library

I dream by the fire
And the nightingales bred in my breast are all astir;
They carol in jubilance high to the tune of my heart's desire
And a thousand altars smoke in my soul to the True and the Fair and the Sweet.
Of frankincense full, such as never grew on earth, and heavenly myrrh,
The censer-fumes of my heart float up to heaven and ever up.
My soul with the music brims and boils, like a sacrificial cup,
And the Muses and Graces round me flit in clouds, with flying feet.

But, sudden, from utterward there in the mist, amidmost the Winter's mirk,
There steals through the window the mewling whine of a mendicant out in the street.
The whine of the cadger that can but cadge, that would rather rot than work,
It fills the air with its shrilling sound; and straight, at the blatant bleat,
The Graces flee and the birds fall mute and the fragrance fades away;
There is nothing left but December's pall of mist and mirkness grey.
The visions, that blew in my breast but now, to the limboes get them back,
The limboes of dreams that fail of flower for the workday din and wrack,
As the cadge-wife's canting doggrel drones and twangs in my tortured ear;
And I curse her and curse myself, in turn, next moment, for cursing her.

The dream is fled;
But still through the window shrills the thin persistent whine,
With its wail of the Winter wind through the boughs in the forest dead;
And the old hysterical pity wells in me, like a poison-wine;
The old unreasoning doubt once more comes deluging all my soul.
“O God, if this thing the one should be of the myriads old and new,”
It cries in my tortured brain; “if this should be for once the true,
“The one sole true of the million false, this oft-told tale of dole!
“If this should be true, my God, and I shut my heart to its cry in the night!”
And as ever, reason to ruth must yield, and I give her an alms; and she,

She looks with the fawning face and the smile of mingled hate and spite,
The smile of the beggar born and bred, from age to age, at me,
The smile of the sluggard, whose dream of heaven is squalor and idleness,
That takes and curses the giver at heart and scorns him for his largesse,
The smile and the glance of the slave ingrain, that might nevermore be free
And that scouteth those who have struggled clear of the chains of the Will-to-be,
The look and the smile of the rotting soul in the body yet alive,
That hates all who do as it cannot,—nay, as it will not,—work and thrive.