Not one of us but had some pearls
And flung them to the swine,
Not one of us but had some gift--
Some spark of fire divine--
Each might have been God's minister
In the temple of some art--
Each feels his gift perverted move
Wormlike through his dry heart.
If God called Azrael to Him now
And bade Death bend the bow
Against the saddest heart that beats
Here on this earth below,
Not any sobbing breast would gain
The guerdon of that barb--
The saddest ones are those that wear
The jester's motley garb.
Whose shout aye loudest rings, and whose
The maddest cranks and quips--
Who mints his soul to laughter's coin
And wastes it with his lips--
Has grown too sad for sighs and seeks
To cheat himself with mirth;
We fools self-doomed to motley are
The weariest wights on earth!
But yet, for us whose brains and hearts
Strove aye in paths perverse,
Doomed still to know the better things
And still to do the worse,--
What else is there remains for us
But make a jest of care
And set the rafters ringing, in
Our Tavern of Despair?
COLORS AND SURFACES
A GOLDEN LAD
(D. V. M.)
"Golden lads and lasses must
Like chimney-sweepers come to dust."
--SHAKESPEARE.
So young, but already the splendor
Of genius robed him about--
Already the dangerous, tender
Regard of the gods marked him out--
(On whom the burden and duty
They bind, at his earliest breath,
Of showing their own grave beauty,
They love and they crown with death.
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