Oracles

I20 ANIMA LUNAE Free from disease and vice, sorrow and age. Only death’s joys assuage A gathering gladness at the thought of sleep. Never in all the archives, scroll on scroll, Reaching from aeons wrote they “ Women weep, Men hate, the children suffer.” In the place Where men most walked a table of fine brass Was set on marble, with an iron style That all might carve within that golden space If one grief came—and still the people pass, And since the city first began None wrote one word thereon till one—a man Witty in spite of happiness—wrote there : “ I grieve because the tablet is so fair And still stands bare, There being none to beautify the same With the moon-curved Arabian character.” Whereat the king, “ Thy grief itself removes In its own cry its cause.” And thence there came Soft laughter that may hardly stir The flowers that shake not in the City of Loves. (For so men called the city’s name Because the people were more mild than doves, More beautiful than Gods of wood or river ; And so the city should endure for ever.) But the king’s mood was otherwise this day. Along time’s river, fifty years away, There was a young man once Ruddier than autumn suns