Promenading their
skirted galleons of sex,
the two office assistants

rock unevenly
together
down the broad stairs,

one
(as I follow slowly
in the trade wind

of my admiration)
gently
slapping her thighs.

This is the house. On one side there is darkness,
On one side there is light.
Into the darkness you may lift your lanterns—
Oh, any number—it will still be night.
And here are echoing stairs to lead you downward
To long sonorous halls.
And here is spring forever at these windows,
With roses on the walls.

This is her room. On one side there is music—
On one side not a sound.
At one step she could move from love to silence,
Feel myriad darkness coiling round.
And here are balconies from which she heard you,
Your steady footsteps on the stair.

She is gone, she is lost, she is found, she is ever fair:
Sorrow draws weakly where love draws not too:
Woe's cries sound nothing, but only in love's ear:
Do then by dying what life cannot do. . . .
Unfold thy flocks and leave them to the fields,
To feed on hills or dales where likes them best
Of what the summer or the spring-time yields,
For love and time hath given thee leave to rest.
Thy heart which was their fold, now in decay
By often storms and winter's many blasts,
All torn and rent becomes misfortune's prey;

Yet wert thou false—in vain the smiles
That played in light around thee
A seraph in an icy chain
That sparkled while it bound thee

I can forget thee—all hath fled
Save one half buried gleam
Of what thou wast—and what thou art
Shall be a nameless dream—

It is October. Let us go.
It is the grand finale. Come——
let us not wait for the fall of the curtain.
I am weary of seeing curtains fall.

But look. The tragic chorus are now arrayed about the stage——
and there is Atropos at the center, making ready to utter her lines.

Look. Even the great vain mountains are making themselves ready.
They are using the lake as a mirror.
They are smeared with peroxide and rouge, and are searching for wrinkles.

Look. The stagehands are already setting the stage for another show.

Come to me soft-eyed sleep,
With your ermine sandalled feet;
Press the pain from my troubled brow
With your kisses cool and sweet;
Lull me with slumbrous song,
Song of your clime, the blest,
While on my heavy eyelids
Your dewy fingers rest.

Come with your native flowers,
Heartsease and lotus bloom,
Enwrap my weary senses
With the cloud of their perfume;
For the whispers of thought tire me,
Their constant, dull repeat,
Like low waves throbbing, sobbing,
With endless, endless beat.

O dark and cruel State
Whose towers are altars unto self alone—
Whose streets with tears are wet,
And half thy councils given unto hate!
Shall Time not hurl thy temples stone from stone,
And o'er the ruin set
A fairer city than the years have known?
Out of thy darkness do we find us dreams,
And on the future gleams
The vision of thy ramparts built anew.
Mammon and War sit now a double throne,
Yet what we dream, a wiser Age shall do.

Be ye lift up, O everlasting gates
Of that far city men shall build for man!
O fairer Day that waits,

O, Little David, play on your harp,
That ivory harp with the golden strings
And sing as you did in Jewry Land,
Of the Prince of Peace and the God of Love
And the Coming Christ Immanuel.
O, Little David, play on your harp.

A seething world is gone stark mad;
And is drunk with the blood,
Gorged with the flesh,
Blinded with the ashes
Of her millions of dead
From out it all and over all
There stands, years old and fully grown,
A monster in the guise of man.
He is of war and not of war;
Born in peace,
Nurtured in arrogant pride and greed,

Oft has our Poet wisht, this happy Seat
Might prove his fading Muses last retreat.
I wonder'd at his wish, but now I find
He sought for quiet, and content of mind;
Which noiseful Towns, and Courts can never know,
And only in the shades like Laurels grow.
Youth, e'er it sees the World, here studies rest,
And Age returning thence concludes it best.
What wonder if we court that happiness
Yearly to share, which hourly you possess,
Teaching ev'n you, (while the vext World we show,)
Your Peace to value more, and better know?