Ballade of Truisms
GOLD or silver, every day,Dies to gray.There are knots in every skein.Hours of work and hours of playFade awayInto one immense Inane.Shadow and substance, chaff and grain,Are as vainAs the foam or as the spray.Life goes crooning, faint and fain,One refrain:‘If it could be always May!’
Though the earth be green and gay,Though, they say,Man the cup of heaven may drain;Though, his little world to sway,He displayHoard on hoard of pith and brain:Autumn brings a mist and rainThat constrainHim and his to know decay,Where undimmed the lights that waneWould remain,If it could be always May.
Yea, alas, must turn to Nay,Flesh to clay.Chance and Time are ever twain.Men may scoff, and men may pray,But they payEvery pleasure with a pain.Life may soar, and Fortune deignTo explainWhere her prizes hide and stay;But we lack the lusty trainWe should gain,If it could be always May.
Envoy
Time, the pedagogue, his caneMight retain,But his charges all would strayTruanting in every lane—Jack with Jane—If it could be always May.
DOUBLE BALLADE OF LIFE AND FATE
FOOLS may pine, and sots may swill,Cynics gibe, and prophets rail,Moralists may scourge and drill,Preachers prose, and fainthearts quail.Let them whine, or threat, or wail!Till the touch of CircumstanceDown to darkness sink the scale,Fate’s a fiddler, Life’s a dance.
What if skies be wan and chill?What if winds be harsh and stale?Presently the east will thrill,And the sad and shrunken sail,Bellying with a kindly gale,Bear you sunwards, while your chanceSends you back the hopeful hail:—‘Fate’s a fiddler, Life’s a dance.’
Idle shot or coming bill,Hapless love or broken bail,Gulp it (never chew your pill!),And, if Burgundy should fail,Try the humbler pot of ale!Over all is heaven’s expanse.Gold’s to find among the shale.Fate’s a fiddler, Life’s a dance.
Dull Sir Joskin sleeps his fill,Good Sir Galahad seeks the Grail,Proud Sir Pertinax flaunts his frill,Hard Sir Æger dints his mail;And the while by hill and daleTristram’s braveries gleam and glance,And his blithe horn tells its tale:—‘Fate’s a fiddler, Life’s a dance.’
Araminta’s grand and shrill,Delia’s passionate and frail,Doris drives an earnest quill,Athanasia takes the veil:Wiser Phyllis o’er her pail,At the heart of all romanceReading, sings to Strephon’s flail:—‘Fate’s a fiddler, Life’s a dance.’
Every Jack must have his Jill(Even Johnson had his Thrale!):Forward, couples—with a will!This, the world, is not a jail.Hear the music, sprat and whale!Hands across, retire, advance!Though the doomsman’s on your trail,Fate’s a fiddler, Life’s a dance.
Envoy
Boys and girls, at slug and snailAnd their kindred look askance.Pay your footing on the nail:Fate’s a fiddler, Life’s a dance.
DOUBLE BALLADE OF THE NOTHINGNESS OF THINGS
THE big teetotum twirls,And epochs wax and waneAs chance subsides or swirls;But of the loss and gainThe sum is always plain.Read on the mighty pall,The weed of funeralThat covers praise and blame,The —isms and the —anities,Magnificence and shame:—‘O Vanity of Vanities!’
The Fates are subtile girls!They give us chaff for grain.And Time, the Thunderer, hurls,Like bolted death, disdainAt all that heart and brainConceive, or great or small,Upon this earthly ball.Would you be knight and dame?Or woo the sweet humanities?Or illustrate a name?O Vanity of Vanities!
We sound the sea for pearls,Or drown them in a drain;We flute it with the merles,Or tug and sweat and strain;We grovel, or we reign;We saunter, or we brawl;We answer, or we call;We search the stars for Fame,Or sink her subterranities;The legend’s still the same:—‘O Vanity of Vanities!’
Here at the wine one birls,There some one clanks a chain.The flag that this man furlsThat man to float is fain.Pleasure gives place to pain:These in the kennel crawl,While others take the wall.She has a glorious aim,He lives for the inanities.What comes of every claim?O Vanity of Vanities!
Alike are clods and earls.For sot, and seer, and swain,For emperors and for churls,For antidote and bane,There is but one refrain:But one for king and thrall,For David and for Saul,For fleet of foot and lame,For pieties and profanities,The picture and the frame:—‘O Vanity of Vanities!’
Life is a smoke that curls—Curls in a flickering skein,That winds and whisks and whirlsA figment thin and vain,Into the vast Inane.One end for hut and hall!One end for cell and stall!Burned in one common flameAre wisdoms and insanities.For this alone we came:—‘O Vanity of Vanities!’
Envoy
Prince, pride must have a fall.What is the worth of allYour state’s supreme urbanities?Bad at the best’s the game.Well might the Sage exclaim:—‘O Vanity of Vanities!’