| |
I. OF Time what may a poet sing, | |
| Who sees his seasons come and go, | |
| With heart that falters and eyes askance? | |
| Who reads with sad prophetic glance | |
| The pitiful tale of the dead rose-garden | 5 |
| All folded away in the buds of the spring, | |
| And dreams, awake, of the summer glow, | |
| Whilst snow-flakes fall, and whilst hoar-frosts harden, | |
| Yet hopes for nothing from change or chance,— | |
| How may a poet sing, and know? | 10 |
| |
II. Let him rise and tune to a mingled measure, | |
| Blood and roses alike bloom red— | |
| Pleasure in pain, and pain in pleasure— | |
| Bitter the hunger, and bitter the bread | |
| Time will tarnish a tawdry treasure, | 15 |
| Turn gold to silver, and silver to lead; | |
| Rise up and tune to a mingled measure: | |
| Of Time, our master, what may be said? | |
| |
III. Boy and girl, we have played together, | |
| Hearts in slumber, and heads in air— | 20 |
| Maiden trim with the floating feather, | |
| Sailor-lad, with a future clear, | |
| Snatching a kiss as he climbed the stair— | |
| (‘Kiss me,’ he said, on the twilight stair, | |
| Half for pastime, and half in sorrow)— | 25 |
| Sailor-lad, that would sail to-morrow | |
| Out to the uttermost hemisphere. | |
| A few hot tears, and a lock of hair, | |
| And a widowed heart in the summer weather, | |
| A widowed heart for the half of a year, | 30 |
| And the satisfied sense of a secret care, | |
| Whilst squirrels were sporting and thrushes sung, | |
| And the old folks whispered and gossiped together, | |
| Each one snug in an easy-chair, | |
| And murmured low, ‘Beware, beware! | 35 |
| Not a word of this, lest the child should hear;’ | |
| Heart of my heart! it was good to be young! | |
| |
IV. Good ships have foundered the whole world over, | |
| For the sea is a grave, and some hearts are sore | |
| For stately ship and for sailor-lover | 40 |
| That never again come back to the shore. | |
| But the maid is a bride, and the bride a mother | |
| (Bud, and blossom, and blown-out flower), | |
| And the new-born lives, one after another, | |
| Are a-dance, like motes, in the sunlit hour; | 45 |
| But the two arm-chairs stand there as witness, | |
| Though the babes and the sucklings clamber and crow: | |
| ‘’Tis the nature of all things in their fitness— | |
| They were both of them old, it was time they should go.’ | |
| |
V. But we—we are young, we have time to linger | 50 |
| By pleasant pathways from Yule to June, | |
| So never heed Time, with his warning finger | |
| And shifting glass; for it is but noon! | |
| So pipe and sing to a blithesome tune, | |
| Though it be as the song of the wandering singer, | 55 |
| Who loiters awhile, but who does not stay; | |
| Or the fatal vow of the faithless lover, | |
| Who loves, and kisses, and rides away; | |
| Or the notes of the nightingale trilling in May, | |
| Or the chirp of the grasshopper hid in the clover, | 60 |
| That wists not when they will mow the hay, | |
| Nor knows when the nightingale’s singing is over. | |
| |
VI. Yet were it well that these should know? | |
| A sorry world if all were wise— | |
| If all life’s finger-posts were plain, | 65 |
| And all the blind could find their eyes | |
| To see that Wisdom’s self is vain! | |
| Nay, let the hour unchallenged go, | |
| For wisdom cometh unaware, | |
| When, coy at first, as violet hidden, | 70 |
| Or guest, unto the feast unbidden, | |
| Death’s messenger, the silver hair, | |
| Glistens alike in brown and gold. | |
| Alas, old friend, are the sands so low? | |
| Alas, my love, it is even so!… | 75 |
| And can it be that we too are old? | |
| |
VII. Yea, sit we down in the old folks’ chair, | |
| And watch we the little ones crow and clamber; | |
| We have woven yew-garlands for sunny hair, | |
| And put out the lights in the bridal chamber; | 80 |
| And hand in hand, and with dimming eyes | |
| Wait we, and watch in the dusk together, | |
| O love, my love of the summer weather, | |
| Heart of my heart, who wert once so fair! | |
| No more of toiling, no more of spinning, | 85 |
| No more heart-beatings, no more surprise; | |
| For the end is foreseen from the first beginning, | |
| The castle is fall’n ere its turrets rise— | |
| Ah, love, my love, it is sad to be wise! | |
| |
VIII. But Time, our master, stands winged and hoary, | 90 |
| And seeming to smile as he whets his blade; | |
| Whilst Love is whisp’ring the same old story, | |
| And Hope seems shrinking and half afraid; | |
| For of these the measure of youth is made, | |
| And the measure of pleasure, the measure of glory | 95 |
| Which is meted out to a human lot; | |
| And so on to the end (and the end draws nearer), | |
| When our souls may be freer, our senses clearer | |
| (’Tis an old world creed which is nigh forgot), | |
| When the eyes of the sleepers may waken in wonder, | 100 |
| And the hearts may be joined that were riven asunder, | |
| And Time and Love shall be merged—in what? | |
| |
