Classic Poem

I.

Now I have learned this much at twenty-five:
That one may ring this world as does the sun
And find no land, nor any word of one,
Where there is wit or worth in being alive.
Well though he plan, and cunningly contrive,
The broth was brewed long since, the web was spun,
And he will have, until his days be done,
Sorrow to nurse him, bitterness to wive.

So it is here, and so in Samarkand.
Troy knew it so, and he is mad or blind
Who dreams it otherwise in any place.
I sought romance on many an alien strand.
I found instead, as every man must find,
Dearth at each hearthstone, doom on every face.

II.

There is a glory in Northumbrian hills.
There is a charm on Macedonian lakes.
Yet in a flicker of breath the chalice breaks
And the tart amber ichor of beauty spills
Into the dust. A passionate hour distills
Life's wine to one rich draft. The dreamer slakes
His need — quaffs of oblivion — and awakes
To the dark travail of his own warring wills.
This is the curse: that ever a man must come
Back to himself — himself — past love, past vision
That are but phantoms woven by the sun
In a barred room.
It is not Byzantium
I seek, but some far place where the shrill derision
Of self will follow no more. And there is none.

III.

So it is wiser to live as others do —
Straitly, with temperate tread and cunning eye;
Loving no thing too much, for loved things die;
Building no temples that the years may hew
Asunder. Toil will get you gold, and you
Can buy with riches many a glowing lie
To warm you: music, pictures, and the shy,
Sweet madness of poetry, loveliest, most untrue!

All lovely things are lies, in mockery fashioned,
Yet valiant and audacious falsehoods: God,
And immortality, and pattern, and song.
Treasure them craftily, that, duly rationed,
They may eke out this wearisome period
Before the dark — and may it not be long.