| |
| O CLOTHED in purple, flushed with wine, | |
| Keen-eyed for beauty, skilled in art, | |
| That only lack the sense divine, | |
| The beatings of a human heart, | |
| Draw near and list the strange and wondrous tale, | 5 |
| The hidden things of death that lie behind the veil. | |
| |
| Ye watch the sparkling wine-beads float | |
| In crystal cup, with languid eyes, | |
| Each shade of savour duly note, | |
| As painter marks a sunset’s skies, | 10 |
| Praise the wrought bronze, and smiling Hebe’s bust, | |
| Where sculptor’s cunning hands meet the eye’s wandering lust. | |
| |
| Art’s treasures, gems and gold, ye heap, | |
| Toils of far lands, and distant time | |
| On couch of softest down ye sleep, | 15 |
| And list to poet’s strains sublime, | |
| Ye carve the cedar column, gild the floor, | |
| And Lazarus, clothed in rags, lies starving at your door. | |
| |
| Ye have your joy, while life is fresh, | |
| Ye pamper eye and ear and taste, | 20 |
| Meet every wish of world and flesh, | |
| And heedless live in wanton waste; | |
| Your revel mirth still waxes more and more, | |
| Yet Lazarus, worn and pale, lies starving at your door. | |
| |
| So is it now, but soon or late, | 25 |
| There comes the chill of darkness born; | |
| Your house is left you desolate, | |
| Ye linger in an age outworn, | |
| And no faint pulses of a former sense | |
| Can soothe the gnawing pain of weariness intense. | 30 |
| |
| Then shall ye ask, but all in vain, | |
| For strength to catch the fleeting hours; | |
| Ah, who will give you once again | |
| Life’s glowing dawn, its opening flowers? | |
| Renew in age when every leaf is sere, | 35 |
| The brightness of your youth, the springtide of the year? | |
| |
| And oh, if this be presage true, | |
| Of that which lies beyond the tomb, | |
| If there no breadth of sky is blue, | |
| But darkness all and deepening gloom; | 40 |
| If Dives lifts in pain his weary eyes, | |
| And Lazarus rests at last in groves of Paradise, | |
| |
| Oh learn ye, learn; be wise in time, | |
| Set heart and soul on things above, | |
| See glory in the strife with crime, | 45 |
| See beauty in each act of love; | |
| Above all charm of art and man’s device, | |
| Set ye the smile of God, the bliss beyond all price. | |
| |
| For those whose hearts are tuned aright, | |
| God’s world will ope its treasures rare, | 50 |
| New glories when the dawn is bright, | |
| New wonders in each floweret fair; | |
| Seek beauty only and ye fail to find; | |
| Seek good, and beauty floats to eye and ear and mind. | |
| |
| Full soon the laugh of revel mirth | 55 |
| Dies out; the blazing thorns grow cold; | |
| The heirs of Heaven are heirs of earth, | |
| They taste the joy that grows not old; | |
| E’en with the world’s false mammon make they friends, | |
| And in the tents abide whose glory never ends. | 60 |
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