And last, to make thy drama all complete, That love and cruelty may mix and meet, I, thy remorseful torturer, will take All the Seven Deadly Sins, and from them make In darkest joy, Seven Knives, cruel-edged and keen, And like a juggler choosing, O my Queen, That spot profound whence love and mercy start, I'll plunge them all within thy panting heart!
Where'er he be, on water or on land, Under pale suns or climes that flames enfold; One of Christ's own, or of Cythera's band, Shadowy beggar or Crœsus rich with gold;
Citizen, peasant, student, tramp; whate'er His little brain may be, alive or dead; Man knows the fear of mystery everywhere, And peeps, with trembling glances, overhead.
The heaven above? A strangling cavern wall; The lighted ceiling of a music-hall Where every actor treads a bloody soil--
The hermit's hope; the terror of the sot; The sky: the black lid of the mighty pot Where the vast human generations boil!
I'm like some king in whose corrupted veins Flows aged blood; who rules a land of rains; Who, young in years, is old in all distress; Who flees good counsel to find weariness Among his dogs and playthings, who is stirred Neither by hunting-hound nor hunting-bird; Whose weary face emotion moves no more E'en when his people die before his door. His favourite Jester's most fantastic wile Upon that sick, cruel face can raise no smile; The courtly dames, to whom all kings are good, Can lighten this young skeleton's dull mood No more with shameless toilets. In his gloom Even his lilied bed becomes a tomb. The sage who takes his gold essays in vain To purge away the old corrupted strain, His baths of blood, that in the days of old The Romans used when their hot blood grew cold, Will never warm this dead man's bloodless pains, For green Lethean water fills his veins.
Under the overhanging yews, The dark owls sit in solemn state. Like stranger gods; by twos and twos Their red eyes gleam. They meditate.
Motionless thus they sit and dream Until that melancholy hour When, with the sun's last fading gleam, The nightly shades assume their power.
From their still attitude the wise Will learn with terror to despise All tumult, movement, and unrest;
For he who follows every shade, Carries the memory in his breast, Of each unhappy journey made.