The Equinox (Volume I, Number IX)

THE EQUINOX The dusk is fallen ; there is no more green ; The day is past, and love and life are fled: Out from my window in the night I lean To hear the waiting ghosts of hours long dead. But, being dead, they dwell at rest in me, Turned into song by love’s strange alchemy. Wherefore I sing of things long past and dead; Wherefore I murmur foolishly in sleep; The old, old pain still throbbing through my head In dreams of desert valleys, mountains steep, With winding paths ; hot suns and scorching plains. There is a fire unquenched within my brains. Because I sing in unknown cadences, Because I strive so hotly to recall Some murmur I have heard on sunken seas, Some vision I have seen beyond the wall, Now sombrely I await the secret rime, Known of the poet—and the Ghost of Time! And so before the bloom has left the Rose, While life's strong youth is surging through me still, I end the songs here wrought; the loves and woes Of old dead lives and lovers and their ill— Because a poet’s curse I bear away, My payment for the vision of the day. Because my heart is as a ten-stringed lyre, I cannot still the music of my mouth ; Because my tongue is wrought of molten fire, I cannot quench my spirit’s ceaseless drouth : - 196