GOLD or silver, every day,
Dies to gray.
There are knots in every skein.
Hours of work and hours of play
Fade away
Into one immense Inane.
Shadow and substance, chaff and grain,
Are as vain
As the foam or as the spray.
Life goes crooning, faint and fain,
One refrain:
‘If it could be always May!’
Though the earth be green and gay,
Though, they say,
Man the cup of heaven may drain;
Though, his little world to sway,
He display
Hoard on hoard of pith and brain:
Autumn brings a mist and rain
That constrain
Him and his to know decay,
Where undimmed the lights that wane
Would remain,
If it could be always May.
_Yea_, alas, must turn to _Nay_,
Flesh to clay.
Chance and Time are ever twain.
Men may scoff, and men may pray,
But they pay
Every pleasure with a pain.
Life may soar, and Fortune deign
To explain
Where her prizes hide and stay;
But we lack the lusty train
We should gain,
If it could be always May.
_Envoy_
Time, the pedagogue, his cane
Might retain,
But his charges all would stray
Truanting in every lane—
Jack with Jane—
If it could be always May.
DOUBLE BALLADE
OF LIFE AND FATE
FOOLS may pine, and sots may swill,
Cynics gibe, and prophets rail,
Moralists may scourge and drill,
Preachers prose, and fainthearts quail.
Let them whine, or threat, or wail!
Till the touch of Circumstance
Down to darkness sink the scale,
Fate’s a fiddler, Life’s a dance.
What if skies be wan and chill?
What if winds be harsh and stale?
Presently the east will thrill,
And the sad and shrunken sail,
Bellying with a kindly gale,
Bear you sunwards, while your chance
Sends you back the hopeful hail:—
‘Fate’s a fiddler, Life’s a dance.’
Idle shot or coming bill,
Hapless love or broken bail,
Gulp it (never chew your pill!),
And, if Burgundy should fail,
Try the humbler pot of ale!
Over all is heaven’s expanse.
Gold’s to find among the shale.
Fate’s a fiddler, Life’s a dance.
Dull Sir Joskin sleeps his fill,
Good Sir Galahad seeks the Grail,
Proud Sir Pertinax flaunts his frill,
Hard Sir Æger dints his mail;
And the while by hill and dale
Tristram’s braveries gleam and glance,
And his blithe horn tells its tale:—
‘Fate’s a fiddler, Life’s a dance.’
Araminta’s grand and shrill,
Delia’s passionate and frail,
Doris drives an earnest quill,
Athanasia takes the veil:
Wiser Phyllis o’er her pail,
At the heart of all romance
Reading, sings to Strephon’s flail:—
‘Fate’s a fiddler, Life’s a dance.’
Every Jack must have his Jill
(Even Johnson had his Thrale!):
Forward, couples—with a will!
This, the world, is not a jail.
Hear the music, sprat and whale!
Hands across, retire, advance!
Though the doomsman’s on your trail,
Fate’s a fiddler, Life’s a dance.
_Envoy_
Boys and girls, at slug and snail
And their kindred look askance.
Pay your footing on the nail:
Fate’s a fiddler, Life’s a dance.
DOUBLE BALLADE
OF THE NOTHINGNESS OF THINGS
THE big teetotum twirls,
And epochs wax and wane
As chance subsides or swirls;
But of the loss and gain
The sum is always plain.
Read on the mighty pall,
The weed of funeral
That covers praise and blame,
The —isms and the —anities,
Magnificence and shame:—
‘O Vanity of Vanities!’
The Fates are subtile girls!
They give us chaff for grain.
And Time, the Thunderer, hurls,
Like bolted death, disdain
At all that heart and brain
Conceive, or great or small,
Upon this earthly ball.
Would you be knight and dame?
Or woo the sweet humanities?
Or illustrate a name?
O Vanity of Vanities!
We sound the sea for pearls,
Or drown them in a drain;
We flute it with the merles,
Or tug and sweat and strain;
We grovel, or we reign;
We saunter, or we brawl;
We answer, or we call;
We search the stars for Fame,
Or sink her subterranities;
The legend’s still the same:—
‘O Vanity of Vanities!’
Here at the wine one birls,
There some one clanks a chain.
The flag that this man furls
That man to float is fain.
Pleasure gives place to pain:
These in the kennel crawl,
While others take the wall.
_She_ has a glorious aim,
_He_ lives for the inanities.
What comes of every claim?
O Vanity of Vanities!
Alike are clods and earls.
For sot, and seer, and swain,
For emperors and for churls,
For antidote and bane,
There is but one refrain:
But one for king and thrall,
For David and for Saul,
For fleet of foot and lame,
For pieties and profanities,
The picture and the frame:—
‘O Vanity of Vanities!’
Life is a smoke that curls—
Curls in a flickering skein,
That winds and whisks and whirls
A figment thin and vain,
Into the vast Inane.
One end for hut and hall!
One end for cell and stall!
Burned in one common flame
Are wisdoms and insanities.
For this alone we came:—
‘O Vanity of Vanities!’
_Envoy_
Prince, pride must have a fall.
What is the worth of all
Your state’s supreme urbanities?
Bad at the best’s the game.
Well might the Sage exclaim:—
‘O Vanity of Vanities!’