Look around -- you haven't far To look -- and why be dumb?
Not the place that used to be, Not so many things to see;But there's room for you and me.
And you -- you've come.
Talk a little; or, if not, Show me with a sign Why it was that you forgot What was yours and mine.
Friends, I gather, are small things In an age when coins are kings;Even at that, one hardly flings Friends before swine.
Rather strong? I knew as much, For it made you speak.
No offense to swine, as such, But why this hide-and-seek?
You have something on your side, And you wish you might have died, So you tell me.And you tried One night last week?
You tried hard? And even then Found a time to pause?
When you try as hard again, You'll have another cause.
When you find yourself at odds With all dreamers of all gods, You may smite yourself with rods --But not the laws.
Though they seem to show a spite Rather devilish, They move on as with a might Stronger than your wish.
Still, however strong they be, They bide man's authority:
Xerxes, when he flogged the sea, May've scared a fish.
It's a comfort, if you like, To keep honor warm, But as often as you strike The laws, you do no harm.
To the laws, I mean.To you --
That's another point of view, One you may as well indue With some alarm.
Not the most heroic face To present, I grant;Nor will you insure disgrace By fearing what you want.
Freedom has a world of sides, And if reason once derides Courage, then your courage hides A deal of cant.
Learn a little to forget Life was once a feast;You aren't fit for dying yet, So don't be a beast.
Few men with a mind will say, Thinking twice, that they can pay Half their debts of yesterday, Or be released.
There's a debt now on your mind More than any gold?
And there's nothing you can find Out there in the cold?
Only -- what's his name? -- Remorse?
And Death riding on his horse?
Well, be glad there's nothing worse Than you have told.
Leave Remorse to warm his hands Outside in the rain.
As for Death, he understands, And he will come again.
Therefore, till your wits are clear, Flourish and be quiet -- here.
But a devil at each ear Will be a strain?
Past a doubt they will indeed, More than you have earned.
I say that because you need Ablution, being burned?
Well, if you must have it so, Your last flight went rather low.
Better say you had to know What you have learned.
And that's over.Here you are, Battered by the past.
Time will have his little scar, But the wound won't last.
Nor shall harrowing surprise Find a world without its eyes If a star fades when the skies Are overcast.
God knows there are lives enough, Crushed, and too far gone Longer to make sermons of, And those we leave alone.
Others, if they will, may rend The worn patience of a friend Who, though smiling, sees the end, With nothing done.
But your fervor to be free Fled the faith it scorned;Death demands a decency Of you, and you are warned.
But for all we give we get Mostly blows? Don't be upset;You, Bokardo, are not yet Consumed or mourned.
There'll be falling into view Much to rearrange;And there'll be a time for you To marvel at the change.
They that have the least to fear Question hardest what is here;When long-hidden skies are clear, The stars look strange.
The Man against the SkyBetween me and the sunset, like a dome Against the glory of a world on fire, Now burned a sudden hill, Bleak, round, and high, by flame-lit height made higher, With nothing on it for the flame to kill Save one who moved and was alone up there To loom before the chaos and the glare As if he were the last god going home Unto his last desire.
Dark, marvelous, and inscrutable he moved on Till down the fiery distance he was gone, --Like one of those eternal, remote things That range across a man's imaginings When a sure music fills him and he knows What he may say thereafter to few men, --The touch of ages having wrought An echo and a glimpse of what he thought A phantom or a legend until then;For whether lighted over ways that save, Or lured from all repose, If he go on too far to find a grave, Mostly alone he goes.
Even he, who stood where I had found him, On high with fire all round him, --Who moved along the molten west, And over the round hill's crest That seemed half ready with him to go down, Flame-bitten and flame-cleft, --As if there were to be no last thing left Of a nameless unimaginable town, --Even he who climbed and vanished may have taken Down to the perils of a depth not known, From death defended though by men forsaken, The bread that every man must eat alone;He may have walked while others hardly dared Look on to see him stand where many fell;And upward out of that, as out of hell, He may have sung and striven To mount where more of him shall yet be given, Bereft of all retreat, To sevenfold heat, --As on a day when three in Dura shared The furnace, and were spared For glory by that king of Babylon Who made himself so great that God, who heard, Covered him with long feathers, like a bird.
Again, he may have gone down easily, By comfortable altitudes, and found, As always, underneath him solid ground Whereon to be sufficient and to stand Possessed already of the promised land, Far stretched and fair to see:
A good sight, verily, And one to make the eyes of her who bore him Shine glad with hidden tears.
Why question of his ease of who before him, In one place or another where they left Their names as far behind them as their bones, And yet by dint of slaughter toil and theft, And shrewdly sharpened stones, Carved hard the way for his ascendency Through deserts of lost years?
Why trouble him now who sees and hears No more than what his innocence requires, And therefore to no other height aspires Than one at which he neither quails nor tires?
He may do more by seeing what he sees Than others eager for iniquities;He may, by seeing all things for the best, Incite futurity to do the rest.
Or with an even likelihood, He may have met with atrabilious eyes The fires of time on equal terms and passed Indifferently down, until at last His only kind of grandeur would have been, Apparently, in being seen.
