Classic Poem

We readers of the older West
In wonder turn his Eastern page
Who preaches to a self-loved age
That self-forgetfulness is best;

Figures in grave procession shown,
No painted things of wire and wood,
But entities of flesh and blood,
With faiths and passions like our own,

And She, — that soul of grace and pride,
Gripped in the vice of circumstance,
We hear, as in a breathless trance,
Of how she loved, and erred, and died.

So strong a sister's load to share,
To eager Love's behest so frail,
Till all his fires could not prevail
To turn the march of cold Despair,

She learned, as broke the Enchanter's wand,
The dull reality of things;
She beat the cage with bleeding wings,
And burst into the dread Beyond

And what of us? unveil who can
Our own decorous English life,
The tangle and the secret strife, —
The changeless heritage of man, —

The jangled chords that mar the tune,
The mad desires, the hopes that die,
The tragedies that underlie
The laughter of a London June: —

God knows, — who sees us as we are,
Of contradictions all compact,
The nobler aim, the baser act,
To hug the yoke, or scale the star;

From fair to foul, from foul to fair,
Like her, we drift and wander thus;
God's mercy keep, for her, for us,
Chance of retrieval otherwhere!