Poems and Sonnets :: :: University of Virginia Library

O sea of all the sorrow of the earth,
Thou rollest wide gray-garmented sad waves
Across a mute metropolis of graves,
Thou takest from us, but dost not give birth
To other than a melancholy mirth—
Who hath been salted in thy cruel caves
To the end the scar of his remembrance saves
And holdeth but of little passing worth
The occasional gleams of a most sorry sun
That striveth through the mists to beat a way,
He knoweth that the evening will be gray,
He knoweth that the sand of time will run
No faster, though he shake the glass and pray
Existence to give over and have done.

II

No faster—though he plead with piteous tears—
For each shall struggle his allotted span,
Enjoy and suffer, each as best he can,
Performing a pale pilgrimage of years
That slowly build a greatening pile of biers
Above the hopes with which the youth began
His fervent course, when first his chariot ran
Triumphantly, not knowing aught of fears;
The roses now have shed their summer leaves,
The bloom is faded, shorn the strength of limb,
The eye that flashed with brilliance once is dim,
Droop heads of desolation sodden sheaves
Over which hangs a cloudy sky that grieves
The swallows who in low sad circuit swim.

III

Are these things true? Is Beauty not a fable
Invented by the misty minds of men
As seasoning for a supper now and then?
Hath Goodness, think you, a foundation stable,
And is there other than a flimsy cable
Connecting us with lands beyond the sky
Of which men babble when they come to die
Because they find themselves no longer able
For pleasure upon earth? Is God a dream,
And harmony, the poet's crown of bays,
And other crowns as well that all men praise
That for a season satisfying seem?
And is it merely a nervous self-wrought gleam
That fire of Love that flashed upon the ways,

IV

And turned the very paving stones to gold?
Then let us sink into our beds and sleep,
Or cast ourselves upon the grass and weep
Until another Deluge we behold
The hideous beauty-lacking fields enfold
Through which we cripples, shorn of deity, creep;
What is there left for us but one long deep
Draught of annihilation icy cold?
For what we used to worship is away,
And we ourselves are nowise worshipful,
And we have lost the art the strings to pull
That move aside the curtains of the day,
And we have lost the knowledge how to pray—
Of misery's bitter herbs our hands are full;

V

The apples of our love have turned sour,
We see no longer what of old we saw,
Nor is the vision present any more
Of Beauty holding in her hand the flower,
The scent of which her grace was wont to shower
Our poet's rainbow-coloured garments o'er;
The voices of our souls are very sore
For lack of singing, yea, for lack of power
Lark-like to rise into the morning sky;
No longer overhead the air is blue,
Cold shafts of raindrops pierce us through and through
Until we raise an exceeding bitter cry,
And crouching forehead downward, wait to die
For want of any living thing to do.

VI

Yet they were sweet, the old familiar days
In which we trod firmfooted on the earth,
When lips were resonant with frequent mirth,
And mouths were moved with frequent lilt of lays,
And hands were able thanksgiving to raise
To Heaven; when we were strong and all went well,
Our foot-soles ignorant as yet of hell,
And eyes not shrivelled with the infernal blaze;
The memory abideth; even here,
Amid the scorching gloomy aisles of heat
Wherein we wander, cool old shades are sweet,
And in the pressing presence of a fear
That giveth us no rest we still hold dear
Earth's grasses grateful to uncovered feet;

VII

We still remember pleasant hours of noon
In summer, and the happy river-sides
Where ripple unceasing after ripple glides,
The tender radiance of the August moon
That breatheth down a sweet delirious swoon
Of ecstasy, and eloquence provides
For lovers sailing down the abundant tides
That move the boat of Passion to a tune
Of fairy-fingered music; we are glad,
With feet enshrined upon the fiery bars
Of agony that every feature mars,
To recollect that even we have had,
We sorrowfullest sinners, we who are sad,
A sight of some sweet clusters of the stars

VIII

Of Love's innumerable constellations;
These lips once quivered at a maiden's kiss,
That now must tremble at the tyrant hiss,
The steam-engine approach, of hostile nations
Of gad-flies of remorse that take their stations
Upon the neck and shoulders of a man
Bare for the torment, where each stinger can,
Each to pursue his noisome occupations;
Once we were free from these—free as a child
Who having wandered from his mother's arms
Plucks flower and flower, ignorant of harms
In any, till with voice and gesture mild
She calls him back, and soon his eyes have smiled
Themselves to sleep forgetful of alarms.