Accurséd hopes, accurséd fears, accursed pleasures.
Long-suffering of all life!
Changed consciousness at strife!
No dancer treads the melancholy measures
Unchanged for one short tune: no dancer flags,
The hateful music luring them to move
Weary and desolate ;
And as the rhyme revolves and shrills and drags
Their limbs insane they smile and call it love,
Or, mocking, call it hatred: it is Fate.
These grey eyes close to the deceitful dream
Of death that will not take the tired for ever.
Again, again, revolves the orb; the stream,
The dew, the cloud, the ocean, and the river.
My magic wand and cup and sword and spell.
Languish, forgotten fears.
The cup is filled with tears ;
The sword is red with blood ; the pentacle
Builded of flesh ; the wand its snake-head rears
Swift energy: my labour is but lost.
I, who thus thought all things to end,
Findin the void no friend.
I have but conjured up the fiend that most
I trusted to abolish: all my toii
Goes to give rest to life, and build anew
These pinnacles of pain,
Cupola upon cupola; the soil
To comfort, to avail, to assoil with dew,
To build the year again.
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