The Sword of Song

ASCENSION DAY 3 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 cham pagne’s foam ; deat h i n m an’s trough, hock lees, Pathos our port’s beeswing ? what answers Sophocles ? Brief, with love’s medicine let’s draught, bolus, globule us ! Wise and succinct bids, I think, Aristobulus.15 Whether my Muse be Euterpe or Clio, Life, Death, and Love are all Batrachomyo16— Machia, what ? ho ! old extinct Alcibiades ? For me, do ut—God true, be mannikin liar !—des ! It’s rather hard, isn’t it, sir, to make sense of it ? Mine of so many pounds—pouch even pence of it ?17 Try something easier,18 where the bard seems to me Seeking that light, which I find comes in dreams to me. Even as he takes to feasts to enlarge upon, So will I do too to launch my old barge upon Analyse, get hints from Newton19 or Faraday,20 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.21 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 ! 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 Apology of poet. Skeleton of poem. Valuable fact for use of lovers. Invocation. Imperfect scholastic at- tainements of author reme- died by his great spiritual insight. His intention.