Quatrains

IF ever echo answered bulbul song,
No doubt it stammered back a feeble tune;
And thus I answer Omar Khayyam’s rune, —
A much-belated echo, far from strong.

Where are the visions of my infant nights,
And where the dreamy hopes of yester-morn?
Have I done anything since I was born
But watch, with eyelids closed, unreal sights?

I sometimes think of labors gone before,
And say, “ To-morrow morning I resume.”
The treasured flask retains the old perfume, —
Alas, the treasured flask retains no more!

Because she looked upon the land with me,
Because she looked upon it with her eyes,
It seemed to me a land of sweetest guise,
From savage mountain top to savage sea.

An artless artist, I could paint her hair
Of gold, her azure eyes, her glowing face,
Yea, every bloom and glory of her grace, —
Could paint them all, upon the empty air.

I met the child of her who once was dear,
And seemed to love as in the former days:
But she recoiled a little from my gaze,
And said, “That graybeard is the man I fear.”

An archer shot an arrow in the dark,
And laughed, “’T is but an arrow thrown away;”
But when he sported forth at dawn of day,
He found his brother lying stiff and stark.

We totter groaning through a cursèd land
Which bears but ashen fruit and poison flowers;
When suddenly it turns to Eden bowers,
Because some passing seraph lifts his hand.

Unless the sun of Austerlitz arise,
In vain the chieftain’s head, the hero’s heart;
Unless the tricksy wind of fortune start,
We cannot reach one earthly paradise.

O wizard juice of all the vines of time, —
Of all the vines that Noah sent us down !
I mind me sitting in a Tuscan town
Beside a flask which turned the world to rhyme.

A bubble swam upon the flagon’s brim,
And, therein drinking, I beheld myself.
I quaffed the very substance of the elf;
I drank destruction,—was it but to him?

“I stood in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs,”
And sighed to see the spectres thronging through;
But they replied, “You are the captive, — you;
We have been free as air for centuries.”

While in the Pantheon I knelt to pray,
With thoughts of Jove and Jesus much perplext,
A broken Hermes scoffed, “What credence next?”
And haloed saints lamented, “ Who can say!”

Here throned the Cæsar; here beneath his feet
The gladiator bowed his pale farewell;
But, standing there, I think of heaven and hell,
And worlds dismissed to triumph or defeat.