The Toast of Despair
We have cried,—and the Gods are silent;We have trusted,—and been betrayed;We have loved,—and the fruit was ashes;We have given,—the gift was weighed.
We know that the heavens are empty,That friendship and love are names;That truth is an ashen cinder,The end of life’s burnt-out flames.
Vainly and long have we waited,Through the night of the human roar,For a single song on the harp of Hope,Or a ray from a day-lit shore.
Songs aye come floating, marvelous sweet,And bow-dyed flashes gleam;But the sweets are Lies, and the weary feetRun after a marsh-light beam.
In the hour of our need the song departs,And the sea-moans of sorrow swell;The siren mocks with a gurgling laughThat is drowned in the deep death-knell.
The light we chased with our stumbling feetAs the goal of happier years,Swings high and low and vanishes,—The bow-dyes were of our tears.
God is a lie, and Faith is a lie,And a tenfold lie is Love;Life is a problem without a why,And never a thing to prove.
It adds, and subtracts, and multiplies,And divides without aim or end;Its answers all false, though false-named true,—Wife, husband, lover, friend.
We know it now, and we care no more;What matters life or death?We tiny insects emerge from earth,Suffer, and yield our breath.
Like ants we crawl on our brief sand-hill,Dreaming of “mighty things,”—Lo, they crunch, like shells in the ocean’s wrath,In the rush of Time’s awful wings.
The sun smiles gold, and the planets white,And a billion stars smile, still;Yet, fierce as we, each wheels towards death,And cannot stay his will.
Then build, ye fools, your mighty things,That Time shall set at naught;Grow warm with the song the sweet Lie sings,And the false bow your tears have wrought.
For us, a truce to Gods, loves, and hopes,And a pledge to fire and wave;A swifter whirl to the dance of death,And a loud huzza for the Grave!
=Philadelphia,= 1892.