Page 112 of 172 DREAMS - Complete Poetical Works

Dying along the troubled sky,

Lay bare, through vistas thunder-riven,

The blackness of the general Heaven,

That very blackness yet doth fling

Light on the lightning's silver wing.

For being an idle boy lang syne,

Who read Anacreon and drank wine,

I early found Anacreon rhymes

Were almost passionate sometimes--

And by strange alchemy of brain

His pleasures always turned to pain--

His naivete to wild desire--

His wit to love--his wine to fire--

And so, being young and dipt in folly,

I fell in love with melancholy.

And used to throw my earthly rest

And quiet all away in jest--

I could not love except where Death

Was mingling his with Beauty's breath--

Or Hymen, Time, and Destiny,

Were stalking between her and me.

* * * * *

But _now_ my soul hath too much room--

Gone are the glory and the gloom--

The black hath mellow'd into gray,

And all the fires are fading away.

My draught of passion hath been deep--

I revell'd, and I now would sleep--

And after drunkenness of soul

Succeeds the glories of the bowl--

An idle longing night and day

To dream my very life away.

But dreams--of those who dream as I,

Aspiringly, are damned, and die:

Yet should I swear I mean alone,

By notes so very shrilly blown,

To break upon Time's monotone,

While yet my vapid joy and grief

Are tintless of the yellow leaf--

Why not an imp the greybeard hath,

Will shake his shadow in my path--

And e'en the greybeard will o'erlook

Connivingly my dreaming-book.

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DOUBTFUL POEMS.

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		Simplicity and repose are the qualities that measure the true value of any work of art. Frank Lloyd Wright