Introduction and Conclusion of a Long Poem
I have gone sometimes by the gates of DeathAnd stood beside the cavern through whose doorsEnter the voyagers into the unseen.From that dread threshold only, gazing back,Have eyes in swift illumination seenLife utterly revealed, and guessed thereinWhat things were vital and what things were vain.Know then, like a vast ocean from my feetSpreading away into the morning sky,I saw unrolled my vanished days, and, lo,Oblivion like a morning mist obscuredToils, trials, ambitions, agitations, ease,And like green isles, sun-kissed, with sweet perfumeLoading the airs blown back from that dim gulf,Gleamed only through the all-involving hazeThe hours when we have loved and been beloved.
Therefore, sweet friends, as often as by LoveYou rise absorbed into the harmonyOf planets singing round magnetic suns,Let not propriety nor prejudiceNor the precepts of jealous age denyWhat Sense so incontestably affirms;Cling to the blessed moment and drink deepOf the sweet cup it tends, as there aloneWere that which makes life worth the pain to live.What is so fair as lovers in their joyThat dies in sleep, their sleep that wakes in joy?Caressing arms are their light pillows. TheyThat like lost stars have wandered hithertoLonesome and lightless through the universe,Now glow transfired at Nature’s flaming core;They are the centre; constellated heavenIs the embroidered panoply spread roundTheir bridal, and the music of the spheresRocks them in hushed epithalamium.
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I know that there are those whose idle tonguesBlaspheme the beauty of the world that wasSo wondrous and so worshipful to me.I call them those that, in the palace whereDown perfumed halls the Sleeping Beauty lay,Wandered without the secret or the key.I know that there are those, of gentler heart,Broken by grief or by deception bowed,Who in some realm beyond the grave conceiveThe bliss they found not here; but, as for me,In the soft fibres of the tender fleshI saw potentialities of JoyTen thousand lifetimes could not use. Dear Earth,In this dark month when deep as morning dewOn thy maternal breast shall fall the bloodOf those that were thy loveliest and thy best,If it be fate that mine shall mix with theirs,Hear this my natural prayer, for, purifiedBy that Lethean agony and cladIn more resplendent powers, I ask nought elseThan reincarnate to retrace my path,Be born again of woman, walk once moreThrough Childhood’s fragrant, flowery wonderlandAnd, entered in the golden realm of Youth,Fare still a pilgrim toward the copious joysI savored here yet scarce began to sip;Yea, with the comrades that I loved so wellResume the banquet we had scarce begunWhen in the street we heard the clarion-callAnd each man sprang to arms—ay, even myselfWho loved sweet Youth too truly not to shareIts pain no less than its delight. If prayersAre to be prayed, lo, here is mine! Be thisMy resurrection, this my recompense!