| VIII Admetus, from my marrow's core I do Despise you: wherefrom pity not your wife, Who, having seen expire her love for you With heaviest grief, today gives up her life. You could not with your mind imagine this: One might surrender, yet continue proud. Not having loved, you do not know: the kiss You sadly beg, is impious, not allowed. Of all I loved, — how many girls and men Have loved me in return? — speak! — young or old — Speak! — sleek or famished, can you find me then One form would flank me, as this night grows cold? I am at peace, Admetus — go and slake Your grief with wine. I die for my own sake. IX What chores these churls do put upon the great, What chains, what harness; the unfettered mind, At dawn, in all directions flying blind Yet certain, might accomplish, might create What all men must consult or contemplate, — Save that the spirit, earth-born and born kind, Cannot forget small questions left behind, Nor honest human impulse underrate: Oh, how the speaking pen has been impeded, To its own cost and to the cost of speech, By specious hands that for some thinly-needed Answer or autograph, would claw a breach In perfect thought . . . till broken thought receded And ebbed in foam, like ocean down a beach. X I will put Chaos into fourteen lines And keep them there; and let them thence escape If he be lucky; let him twist, and ape Flood, fire, and demon — his adroit designs Will strain to nothing in the strict confines Of this sweet Order, where, in pious rape, I hold his essence and amorphous shape, Till he with Order mingles and combines. Past are the hours, the years, of our duress, His arrogance, our awful servitude: I have him. He is nothing more nor less Than something simple not yet understood; I shall not even force him to confess; Or answer. I will only make him good. XI Come home, victorious wounded! — let the dead, The out-of-it, the more victorious still, Hold in the cold the hot-contested hill, Hold by the sand the abandoned smooth beach-head; — Maimed men, whose scars must be exhibited To all the world, though much against your will — And men whose bodies bear no marks of ill, Being twisted only in the guts and head: Come home! come home! — not to the home you long To find, — and which your valour had achieved Had been virtue been but right, and evil wrong! — We have tried hard, and we have greatly grieved: Come home and help us! — you are hurt but strong! — And we — we are bewildered — and bereaved. XII Read history: so learn your place in Time; And go to sleep: all this was done before; We do it better, fouling every shore; We disinfect, we do not probe, the crime. Our engines plunge into the seas, they climb Above our atmosphere: we grow not more Profound as we approach the ocean's floor; Our flight is lofty, it is not sublime. Yet long ago this Earth by struggling men Was scuffed, was scraped by mouths that bubbled mud; And will be so again, and yet again; Until we trace our poison to its bud And root, and there uproot it: until then, Earth will be warmed each winter by man's blood. XIII Read history, thus learn how small a space You may inhabit, nor inhabit long In crowding Cosmos — in that confined place Work boldly; build your flimsy barriers strong; Turn round and round, make warm your nest; among The other hunting beasts, keep heart and face, — Not to betray the doomed and splendid race You are so proud of, to which you belong. For trouble comes to all of us: the rat Has courage, in adversity, to fight; But what a shining animal is man, Who knows, when pain subsides, that is not that, For worse than that must follow — yet can write Music; can laugh; play tennis; even plan. XIV My words that once were virtuous and expressed Nearly enough the mortal joys I knew, Now that I sit to supper with the blest Come haltingly, are very poor and few. Whereof you speak and whereof the bright walls Resound with silver mirth I am aware, But I am faint beneath the coronals Of living vines you set upon my hair. Angelic friends that stand with pointed wings Sweetly demanding, in what dulcet tone, How fare I in this heaven of happy things, — I cannot lift my words against your own. Forgive the downcast look, the lyre unstrung; Breathing your presence, I forget your tongue. |
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