Classic Poem

After so much loss —
Seeming of gain,
Seeming of loss —
Subsides the swell of indignation
To the usual rhythm of the year.

The coward primroses are up,
We contract their profuse mildness.
Women with yet a few springs to live
Clutch them in suppliant bouquets
On the way to relatives,
Who, no, do not begrudge
This postponement of funerals.
And, oh, how never tired, and tired,
The world of primroses, how spring
The bended spirit fascinates
With promise of revival,
Leaving more honest summer to proclaim
That this is all — a brighter disappointment —
Time has to give to an implacable
Persuasion of things lost, wrongly.

Is it to wonder, then,
That we defy the unsuspecting moment,
Release our legs from the year's music,
And, to the reckless strum of hate,
Dance — grinding from primroses the tears
They never of themselves would have shed?
None dances whom no hate stirs,
Who has not lost and loathed the loss,

Who does not feel deprived.
Slyest rebellion of the feet,
The chaste and tremulous disport
Of children, limbs in passionless wave —
None dances whom no hate stirs,
Or shall not stir.

As sure as primrosed spring betides,
After so much loss,
The hate will out, the dance be on,
And many of their rage fall down.
It is easy as spring to yield to the year,
And easy as dance to break with the year.
But to go with the year in partition
Between seeming loss, seeming gain,
That is the difficult decorum.
Nor are the primroses unwelcome.