Hope went by and Peace went by
And would not enter in;
Youth went by and Health went by
And Love that is their kin.
Those within the house shed tears
On their bitter bread;
Some were old and some were mad,
And some were sick a-bed.
Gray Death saw the wretched house
And even he passed by--
"They have never lived," he said,
"They can wait to die."
I plucked a rose, a red rose rare,
I placed her on a throne
Within my heart; and there I dare
To worship her alone.
An idol, thus, I paid to her
My constant vigil, love, and care.
Upon my knees, I prayed to her,
My whole heart in my prayer.
Alas ! my love, my care, my prayer,
Failed! failed to keep my treasure fair.
I saw (my heart filled with despair)
Her drooping head ;
Her beauty, grace and fragrance flown,
Her every leaf and petal shorn,
I gazed in silence — and alone —
Upon my dead.
This street is callous apathy
In a scale of greys and browns.
Its black roof-line suggests
Flat bodies unable to rise.
Even its screams are listlessness
Having an evil dream.
Its air is swarthy rawness
Troubled with ash cans and cellars.
An old woman ambles on
With a black bag that seems part of her back,
And a candidly hawk-like face.
She croons a smothered lullaby
That sifts a flitting roundness
Into her sharply parted face.
Then she surrenders her hand
To the welter of a garbage can.
Why should one live when living is a pain ?
I have not seen a flower had any scent,
Nor heard a bird sing once. The very rain
Seems dirty, and the clouds, all soiled and rent,
Toil sulkily across the black, old sky,
And all the weary stars go moping by,
They care not whither, sea, or mount, or plain,
All's one — and what one gets is never gain.
The sun scowled yesterday a weary while.
It used to beam. The moon last night was grim
With cynic gaze and frosty, sullen smile.
And once I loved to gaze while from the rim
Of some great mountain she would look and gild
The rustling cornfield. Now she is filled
With bitterness and rancour sour as bile,
And blasts the world's surface every mile.
Unrealized, the dim hours come and go,
A hooded, listless file of shadows pale;
Men's deeds like visions pass, and scarce avail
To stir dull thought or give it ebb or flow;
The hopes that pushed us Heavenward once, aglow
With passionate desire, now flag and fail;
The lights have vanished, and the wine grown stale,
The blade is rusted and unstrung the bow.
Oh, better far to climb the toilsome height
Than linger in the valley's flowered way,
Far better in a losing cause to fight
Than feel one's sinews wasting day by day;
Give me the hemlock draught and dreamless night,
Before this daily death of apathy !
Afloat upon the tide one summer night,
Dreamily watching how the moonbeams bright
Made little broken rings of fairy light,
And vaguely lost in that half-conscious mood
That steals upon the sense in solitude,
I drifted near a shadowy island wood
Where all was silent, scarce a leaf was stirred-
So still the air — when suddenly I heard
The piercing, anguished cry as of a bird
In such distress it made the echoes ring
And set the startled silence quivering —
The wild appeal of some sweet feathered thing
In its extremity. And then a sound,
Half-muffled, faint, and all again was drowned
In silence inarticulate, profound.
I went my way; but that despairing cry,
The curtains of twilight are drawn in the west
And vespers are sweet on the air,
While I, through my leafless, ungarlanded way
But pause at the gates of despair.
Good-bye to the hopes that were never fulfilled,
Good-bye to the fond dreams that failed.
Good-bye to my dead that has never been born.
Good-bye to love's ship that ne'er sailed.
Blank and bare
Are the Woods of Despair,
On the goldenest summer day;
And grim and grey
The trodden way
That leads, that leads you there.
O often trodden,
Slippery, sodden,
Lonely, loathed way.
Turn and pace
From place to place,
From desolate nook to nook;
And in every brook
You stop to look,
You meet your own, own face,
Your sickened, weary,
Time was when his half million drew
The breath of six per cent;
But soon the worm of what-was-not
Fed hard on his content;
And something crumbled in his brain
When his half million went.
Time passed, and filled along with his
The place of many more;
Time came, and hardly one of us
Had credence to restore,
From what appeared one day, the man
Whom we had known before.
The broken voice, the withered neck,
The coat worn out with care,
The cleanliness of indigence,
The brilliance of despair,
Once more into my arid days like dew,
Like wind from an oasis, or the sound
Of cold sweet water bubbling underground,
A treacherous messenger, the thought of you
Comes to destroy me; once more I renew
Firm faith in your abundance, whom I found
Long since to be but just one other mound
Of sand, whereon no green thing ever grew.
And once again, and wiser in no wise,
I chase your colored phantom on the air,
And sob and curse and fall and weep and rise
And stumble pitifully on to where,
Miserable and lost, with stinging eyes,
Once more I clasp,--and there is nothing there.
I PRAYED SO eagerly,
" Turn and see
How bitter I have striven —
A word and all forgiven."
I prayed so eagerly.
I prayed so eagerly —
Not to be ;
You turned and passed. Goodbye !
Fates smile for me, dreamed I —
Yet I prayed eagerly.
Please yourself how you have it.
Take my words, and fling
Them down on the counter roundly;
See if they ring.
Sift my looks and expressions,
And see what proportion there is
Of sand in my doubtful sugar
Of verities.
Have a real stock-taking
Of my manly breast;
Find out if I'm sound or bankrupt,
Or a poor thing at best.
For I am quite indifferent
To your dubious state,
As to whether you've found a fortune
In me, or a flea-bitten fate.