WHEN I am weary at the antic chance,
The hobby-horses and the wooden lance,
The hope and fear in jugglery, and see
How starved the juggler, mean and miserly,
And life a laboured trick—the years advance
A shrilling chorus in affected dance
With lust of many eyes that watch and wink
Fixed on them; or a clown in feverish pink
Will draw gross laughter by a hideous prance—
Vulgarity and sin and souls askance,
Where fiddles squeal and all the follies spin—
Till, when the stage is empty, Harlequin
Through curtained silence trips as from a trance
With blushing flowers for Columbine—Romance.
The hobby-horses and the wooden lance,
The hope and fear in jugglery, and see
How starved the juggler, mean and miserly,
And life a laboured trick—the years advance
A shrilling chorus in affected dance
With lust of many eyes that watch and wink
Fixed on them; or a clown in feverish pink
Will draw gross laughter by a hideous prance—
Vulgarity and sin and souls askance,
Where fiddles squeal and all the follies spin—
Till, when the stage is empty, Harlequin
Through curtained silence trips as from a trance
With blushing flowers for Columbine—Romance.
1917