ASCENSION DAY 145
Or, cradle be hardship, and finally coffin, ease,
Love being filth ? let us ask Aristophanes !
Or, heaven’s sun bake us, while Earth’s bugs and fleas kill us,
Love the God’s scourge? I refer you to Aeschylus!
(Nay! that’s a slip! Say we “ Earth’s grim device, cool
loss !—”
Better the old Greek orthography !—Aischulos ! 14)
Or, love be God’s champagne’s foam; death in man’s
trough, hock lees,
- Pathos our port’s beeswing ? what answers Sophocles?
Brief, with love’s medicine let’s draught, bolus, globule us!
40
45
60
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Wise and succinct bids, I think, Aristobulus.!
Whether my Muse be Euterpe or Clio,
Life, Death, and Love are all Batrachomyo !6—
Machia, what? ho! old extinct Alcibiades?
For me, do ut—God true, be mannikin har !—des !
It’s rather hard, isn’t it, sir, to make sense of it?
Mine of so many pounds—pouch even pence of it?!”
Try something easier,!8 where the bard seems to me
Seeking that light, which I find come in dreams to me.
Even as he takes two feasts to enlarge upon,
So will I do too to Jaunch my old barge upon.
Analyse, get hints from Newton ! or Faraday,”
Use every weapon—love, scorn, reason, parody !
Just where he worships? Ah me! shall his soul,
Far in some glory, take hurt from a mole
Grubbing i’ th’ ground? Shall his spirit not see,
Lightning to lightning, the spirit in me?
Parody? Shall not his spirit forgive
Me, who shall love him as long as I live?
Love’s at its height in pure love? Nay, but after
When the song’s light dissolves gently in laughter !
Then and then only the lovers may know
Nothing can part them for ever. And so,
Muse, hover o’er me! Apollo, above her !
I, of the Moderns, have let alone Greek.”
Out of the way Intuition shall shove her.
Spirit and Truth in my darkness I seek.
Little by little they bubble and leak ;
Such as I have to the world I discover.
Words—are they weak ones at best? They shall speak !
VOL, IL K
Apology of
poet.
Skeleton of
poem. Valu-
able fact for
use of lovers.
Invocation.
Imperfect
scholastic at-
tainments of
author reme-
died by his
great spiritual
insight.
His intention.