Chapter IX: Epilogue: For a Masque

A little time they lived again, and lo!
Back to the quiet night the shadows go,
And the great folds of silence once again
Are over fools and kings and fighting-men.

A little while they went with stumbling feet,
With spears of hate, and love all flowery sweet,
With wondering hearts and bright adventurous wills,
And now their dust is on a thousand hills.

We dream of them, as men unborn shall dream
Of us, who strive a little with the stream
Before we too go out beyond the day,
And are as much a memory as they.

And Death, so coming, shall not seem a thing
Of any fear, nor terrible his wing.
We too shall be a tale on earth, and time
Shall shape our pilgrimage into a rhyme.

THE GUEST

Sometimes I feel that death is very near,
And, with half-lifted hand,
Looks in my eyes, and tells me not to fear,
But walk his friendly land,
Comrade with him, and wise
As peace is wise.

Then, greatly though my heart with pity moves
For dear imperilled loves,
I somehow know
That death is friendly so,
A comfortable spirit; one who takes
Long thought for all our sakes.

I wonder; will he come that friendly way,
That guest, or roughly in the appointed day?
And will, when the last drops of life are spilt,
My soul be torn from me,
Or, like a ship truly and trimly built,
Slip quietly to sea?

TREASON

What time I write my roundelays,
I am as proud as princes gone,
Who built their empires in old days,
As Tamburlaine or Solomon;
And wisely though companions then
Say well it is and well I sing,
Assured above the praise of men
I am a solitary king.

But when I leave that straiter mood,
That lonely hour, and put aside
The continence of solitude,
I fall in treason to my pride,
And if a witling’s word be spent
Upon my song in jealousy,
In anger and in argument
I am as derelict as he.

POLITICS

You say a thousand things,
Persuasively,
And with strange passion hotly I agree,
And praise your zest,
And then
A blackbird sings
On April lilac, or fieldfaring men,
Ghostlike, with loaded wain,
Come down the twilit lane
To rest,
And what is all your argument to me?

Oh, yes--I know, I know,
It must be so--
You must devise
Your myriad policies,
For we are little wise,
And must be led and marshalled, lest we keep
Too fast a sleep
Far from the central world’s realities.
Yes, we must heed--
For surely you reveal
Life’s very heart; surely with flaming zeal
You search our folly and our secret need;
And surely it is wrong
To count my blackbird’s song,
My cones of lilac, and my wagon team,
More than a world of dream.

But still
A voice calls from the hill--
I must away--
I cannot hear your argument to-day.

FOR A GUEST ROOM

All words are said,
And may it fall
That, crowning these,
You here shall find
A friendly bed,
A sheltering wall,
Your body’s ease,
A quiet mind.

May you forget
In happy sleep
The world that still
You hold as friend,
And may it yet
Be ours to keep
Your friendly will
To the world’s end.

For he is blest
Who, fixed to shun
All evil, when
The worst is known,
Counts, east and west,
When life is done,
His debts to men
In love alone.

DAY

Dawn is up at my window, and in the May-tree
The finches gossip, and tits, and beautiful sparrows
With feathers bright and brown as September hazels.

The sunlight is here, filtered through rosy curtains,
Docile and disembodied, a ghost of sunlight,
A gentle light to greet the dreamer returning.

Part the curtains. I give you salutation
Day, clear day; let us be friendly fellows.
Come.... I hear the Liars about the city.

DREAMS

We have our dreams; not happiness.
Great cities are upon the hill
To lighten all our dream, and still
We have no cities to possess
But cities built of bitterness.

We see gay fellows top to toe,
And girls in rainbow beauty bright--
’Tis but of silly dreams I write,
For up and down the streets we know,
The scavengers and harlots go.

Give me a dozen men whose theme
Is honesty, and we will set
On high the banner of dreams ... and yet
Thousands will pass us in a stream,
Nor care a penny what we dream.

RESPONSIBILITY

You ploughmen at the gate,
All that you are for me
Is of my mind create,
And in my brain to be
A figure newly won
From the world’s confusion.

And if you are of grace,
That’s honesty for me,
And if of evil face,
Recorded then shall be
Dishonour that I saw
Not beauty, but the flaw.

PROVOCATIONS

I am no merry monger when
I see the slatterns of the town:
I hate to think of docile men
Whose angers all are driven down;
For sluts make joy a thing obscene,
And in contempt is nothing clean.

I like to see the ladies walk
With heels to set their chins atilt:
I like to hear the clergy talk
Of other clergy’s people’s guilt;
For happy is the amorous eye,
And indignation clears the sky.

TRIAL

Beauty of old and beauty yet to be,
Stripped of occasion, have security;
This hour it is searches the judgment through,
When masks of beauty walk with beauty too.

CHARGE TO THE PLAYERS

THE TROJAN WOMEN, BIRMINGHAM REPERTORY THEATRE, APRIL 1918

Shades, that our town-fellows have come
To hear rewake for Christendom
This cleansing of a Pagan wrong
In flowing tides of tragic song,--
You shadows that the living call
To walk again the Trojan wall,--
You lips and countenance renewed
Of an immortal fortitude,--
Know that, among the silent rows
Of these our daily town-fellows,
Watching the shades with these who bring
But mortal ears to this you sing,
There somewhere sits the Greek who made
This gift of song, himself a shade.

CHARACTER

If one should tell you that in such a spring
The hawthorn boughs into the blackbird’s nest
Poured poison, or that once at harvesting
The ears were stony, from so manifest
Slander of proven faith in tree and corn
You would turn unheeding, knowing him forsworn.

Yet now, when one whose life has never known
Corruption, as you know: whose days have been
As daily tidings in your heart of lone
And gentle courage, suffers the word unclean
Of envious tongues, doubting you dare not cry--
“I have been this man’s familiar, and you lie.”

REALITY

It is strange how we travel the wide world over,
And see great churches and foreign streets,
And armies afoot and kings of wonder,
And deeds a-doing to fill the sheets
That grave historians will pen
To ferment the brains of simple men.

And all the time the heart remembers
The quiet habit of one far place,
The drawings and books, the turn of a passage,
The glance of a dear familiar face,
And there is the true cosmopolis,
While the thronging world a phantom is.