SHALL we be christened poets, children of God,
For blowing sighs into the listeners' ears,
For tugging at the moaning bells of death,
And coming as the autumn grave-digger
To close the eyes of flowers, and shut the fingers
Of wind upon the rushes,
Of music upon silence?
Shall we be given wreathes of bay and laurel
For forcing tragedy into a rhyme
As a gaunt beggar in a spangled vest?
The poet ever wanders after Death,
The flunkey on a funeral chariot
Pouring the wine at feasts of burial;
And all the roses that he plucks from summer
Are carried to the crypts to deck a corpse. . . .
How shall the world learn how to laugh again
When all its songs have only learnt to weep?
For blowing sighs into the listeners' ears,
For tugging at the moaning bells of death,
And coming as the autumn grave-digger
To close the eyes of flowers, and shut the fingers
Of wind upon the rushes,
Of music upon silence?
Shall we be given wreathes of bay and laurel
For forcing tragedy into a rhyme
As a gaunt beggar in a spangled vest?
The poet ever wanders after Death,
The flunkey on a funeral chariot
Pouring the wine at feasts of burial;
And all the roses that he plucks from summer
Are carried to the crypts to deck a corpse. . . .
How shall the world learn how to laugh again
When all its songs have only learnt to weep?
1919