Blindness, and women wailing on white seas, Seas where no placid sails have ever been, Dreams like wan demons on waste marshes seen Thro’ dulling, fevered eyes. The dregs and lees Of wine long spilt to dead divinities. Grey, empty days when Spring is never green, Can the heart answer what these riddles mean-- Can the life hold such hopelessness as these?
Love lying low in the long pleasant grass, Youth with his eager face against the sun, They may not guess the hours when these shall pass,
In what drear coin such lovely dreams are paid, At what grim cost their flowery days are won, When man is old and lonely and afraid.
Dawn shaking long light pennons in the East-- Is love the least And love the greatest of the morning’s woes? See how the rose Breaks in a hundred petals down the sky. Darkness must die, And in the heart, where flutters sad desire, Wakes the new fire Silver and azure of the open day. So, grief, away! We will be glad with flagons, drown old pain, And Dawn shall bring us to her own again.
You are the dreams we do not dare to dream, The dim florescence of a mystic rose, In poverty or pride love comes and goes, We do not question what the deeps may seem Launched on the steady current of the stream. Gaily and hardily we hear the prose; In youth, red sun, in age the charnel snows. Nor see the banks where subtle flowers gleam, In green sweet beds of moly and of thyme Wild as an errant fancy. All the while We know you, mystic rose; we know your smile, Your deep, still eyes, your fragrant floating hair, The peacock purple of the gown you wear, O lyric alchemist of rune and rhyme!
Leave the Vine, Ah Love, and the wreath of myrtle, Leave the Song, to die, on the lips of laughter, Come, for love is faint with the choric measure, Weary of waiting.
Down the sky in lines of pellucid amber Blows the hair of her whom the gods have treasured, Fair, more fair is mine in the ring of maidens, Mine for the taking.
I sinned, but gloriously. I bore the fall From Heaven’s high places as becomes a king. I did not shrink before the utmost sting Of torture or of banishment. The pall Of Dis, I cried, should be the hall Where sad proud men of men should meet and sing The woes of that defeat ambitions bring Hurled from the last vain fight against the wall.