I

Fie, fie! you visionary things, ye motes that dance in sunny glow,
Who base and build Eternities on briefest moment here below;

II

Who pass through Life like cagèd birds, the captives of a despot will;
Still wond’ring How and When and Why, and Whence and Whither, wond’ring still;

III

Still wond’ring how the Marvel came because two coupling mammals chose
To slake the thirst of fleshly love, and thus the “Immortal Being” rose;

IV

Wond’ring the Babe with staring eyes, perforce compel’d from night to day,
Gript in the giant grasp of Life like gale-borne dust or wind-wrung spray;

V

Who comes imbecile to the world ’mid double danger, groans, and tears;
The toy, the sport, the waif and stray of passions, error, wrath and fears;

VI

Who knows not Whence he came nor Why, who kens not Whither bound and When,
Yet such is Allah’s choicest gift, the blessing dreamt by foolish men;

VII

Who step by step perforce returns to couthless youth, wan, white and cold,
Lisping again his broken words till all the tale be fully told:

VIII

Wond’ring the Babe with quenchèd orbs, an oldster bow’d by burthening years,
How ’scaped the skiff an hundred storms; how ’scaped the thread a thousand shears;

IX

How coming to the Feast unbid, he found the gorgeous table spread
With the fair-seeming Sodom-fruit, with stones that bear the shape of bread:

X

How Life was nought but ray of sun that clove the darkness thick and blind,
The ravings of the reckless storm, the shrieking of the rav’ening wind;

XI

How lovely visions ’guiled his sleep, aye fading with the break of morn,
Till every sweet became a sour, till every rose became a thorn;

XII

Till dust and ashes met his eyes wherever turned their saddened gaze;
The wrecks of joys and hopes and loves, the rubbish of his wasted days;

XIII

How every high heroic Thought that longed to breathe empyrean air,
Failed of its feathers, fell to earth, and perisht of a sheer despair;

XIV

How, dower’d with heritage of brain, whose might has split the solar ray,
His rest is grossest coarsest earth, a crown of gold on brow of clay;

XV

This House whose frame be flesh and bone, mortar’d with blood and faced with skin,
The home of sickness, dolours, age; unclean without, impure within:

XVI

Sans ray to cheer its inner gloom, the chambers haunted by the Ghost,
Darkness his name, a cold dumb Shade stronger than all the heav’nly host.

XVII

This tube, an enigmatic pipe, whose end was laid before begun,
That lengthens, broadens, shrinks and breaks; puzzle, machine, automaton;

XVIII

The first of Pots the Potter made by Chrysorrhoas’ blue-green wave;1The Abana, River of Damascus.
Methinks I see him smile to see what guerdon to the world he gave!

XIX

How Life is dim, unreal, vain, like scenes that round the drunkard reel;
How “Being” meaneth not to be; to see and hear, smell, taste and feel.

XX

A drop in Ocean’s boundless tide, unfathom’d waste of agony;
Where millions live their horrid lives by making other millions die.

XXI

How with a heart that would through love, to Universal Love aspire,
Man woos infernal chance to smite, as Min’arets draw the thunder-fire.

XXII

How Earth on Earth builds tow’er and wall, to crumble at a touch of Time;
How Earth on Earth from Shînar-plain the heights of Heaven fain would climb.

XXIII

How short this Life, how long withal; how false its weal, how true its woes,
This fever-fit with paroxysms to mark its opening and its close.

XXIV

Ah! gay the day with shine of sun, and bright the breeze, and blithe the throng
Met on the River-bank to play, when I was young, when I was young:

XXV

Such general joy could never fade; and yet the chilling whisper came
One face had paled, one form had failed; had fled the bank, had swum the stream;

XXVI

Still revellers danced, and sang, and trod the hither bank of Time’s deep tide,
Still one by one they left and fared to the far misty thither side;

XXVII

And now the last hath slipt away yon drear Death-desert to explore,
And now one Pilgrim worn and lorn still lingers on the lonely shore.

XXVIII

Yes, Life in youth-tide standeth still; in manhood streameth soft and slow;
See, as it nears the abysmal goal how fleet the waters flash and flow!

XXIX

And Deaths are twain; the Deaths we see drop like the leaves in windy Fall;
But ours, our own, are ruined worlds, a globe collapst, last end of all.

XXX

We live our lives with rogues and fools, dead and alive, alive and dead,
We die ’twixt one who feels the pulse and one who frets and clouds the head:

XXXI

And, – oh, the Pity! – hardly conned the lesson comes its fatal term;
Fate bids us bundle up our books, and bear them bod’ily to the worm:

XXXII

Hardly we learn to wield the blade before the wrist grows stiff and old;
Hardly we learn to ply the pen ere Thought and Fancy faint with cold:

XXXIII

Hardly we find the path of love, to sink the Self, forget the “I,”
When sad suspicion grips the heart, when Man, the Man begins to die:

XXXIV

Hardly we scale the wisdom-heights, and sight the Pisgah-scene around,
And breathe the breath of heav’enly air, and hear the Spheres’ harmonious sound;

XXXV

When swift the Camel-rider spans the howling waste, by Kismet sped,
And of his Magic Wand a wave hurries the quick to join the dead.2Death in Arabia rides a Camel, not a pale horse.

XXXVI

How sore the burden, strange the strife; how full of splendour, wonder, fear;
Life, atom of that Infinite Space that stretcheth ’twixt the Here and There.

XXXVII

How Thought is imp’otent to divine the secret which the gods defend,
The Why of birth and life and death, that Isis-veil no hand may rend.

XXXVIII

Eternal Morrows make our day; our Is is aye to be till when
Night closes in; ’tis all a dream, and yet we die, – and then and THEN?

XXXIX

And still the Weaver plies his loom, whose warp and woof is wretched Man
Weaving th’ unpattern’d dark design, so dark we doubt it owns a plan.

XL

Dost not, O Maker, blush to hear, amid the storm of tears and blood,
Man say Thy mercy made what is, and saw the made and said ’twas good?

XLI

The marvel is that man can smile dreaming his ghostly ghastly dream; –
Better the heedless atomy that buzzes in the morning beam!

XLII

O the dread pathos of our lives! how durst thou, Allah, thus to play
With Love, Affection, Friendship, all that shows the god in mortal clay?

XLIII

But ah! what ’vaileth man to mourn; shall tears bring forth what smiles ne’er brought;
Shall brooding breed a thought of joy?  Ah hush the sigh, forget the thought!

XLIV

Silence thine immemorial quest, contain thy nature’s vain complaint;
None heeds, none cares for thee or thine; – like thee how many came and went?

XLV

Cease, Man, to mourn, to weep, to wail; enjoy thy shining hour of sun;
We dance along Death’s icy brink, but is the dance less full of fun?

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1 The Abana, River of Damascus.

2 Death in Arabia rides a Camel, not a pale horse.