| |
| LITHE and listen, gentlemen: | |
| Other knight of sword or pen | |
| Shall not, while the planets shine, | |
| Spend a holiday like mine. | |
| |
| Fate and I, we play’d at dice: | 5 |
| Thrice I won and lost the main; | |
| Thrice I died the death, and thrice | |
| By my will I lived again. | |
| |
| First a woman broke my heart | |
| As a careless woman can, | 10 |
| Ere the aureoles depart | |
| From the woman and the man. | |
| |
| Dead of love, I found a tomb | |
| Anywhere: beneath, above, | |
| Worms nor stars transpierced the gloom | 15 |
| Of the sepulchre of love. | |
| |
| Wine-cups were the charnel-lights; | |
| Festal songs, the funeral dole; | |
| Joyful ladies, gallant knights, | |
| Comrades of my buried soul. | 20 |
| |
| Tired to death of lying dead | |
| In a common sepulchre, | |
| On an Easter morn I sped | |
| Upward where the world ’s astir. | |
| |
| Soon I gather’d wealth and friends, | 25 |
| Donn’d the livery of the hour, | |
| And atoning diverse ends | |
| Bridged the gulf to place and power. | |
| |
| All the brilliances of Hell | |
| Crush’d by me, with honey’d breath | 30 |
| Fawn’d upon me till I fell, | |
| By pretenders done to death. | |
| |
| Buried in an outland tract, | |
| Long I rotted in the mould, | |
| Though the virgin woodland lack’d | 35 |
| Nothing of the age of gold. | |
| |
| Roses spiced the dews and damps, | |
| Nightly falling of decay; | |
| Dawn and sunset lit the lamps | |
| Where entomb’d I deeply lay. | 40 |
| |
| My companions of the grave | |
| Were the flowers, the growing grass; | |
| Larks intoned a morning stave; | |
| Nightingales a midnight mass. | |
| |
| But at me, effete and dead, | 45 |
| Did my spirit gibe and scoff: | |
| Then the gravecloth from my head | |
| And my shroud—I shook them off. | |
| |
| Drawing strength and subtle craft | |
| Out of ruin’s husk and core, | 50 |
| Through the earth I ran a shaft | |
| Upward to the light once more. | |
| |
| Soon I made me wealth and friends, | |
| Donn’d the livery of the age; | |
| And atoning many ends, | 55 |
| Reign’d as sovereign, priest, and mage. | |
| |
| But my pomp and towering state, | |
| Puissance and supreme device, | |
| Crumbled on the cast of Fate— | |
| Fate, that plays with loaded dice. | 60 |
| |
| I whose arms had harried Hell | |
| Naked faced a heavenly host: | |
| Carved with countless wounds I fell, | |
| Sadly yielding up the ghost. | |
| |
| In a burning mountain thrown | 65 |
| (Titans such a tomb attain), | |
| Many a grisly age had flown | |
| Ere I rose and lived again. | |
| |
| Parch’d and charr’d I lay; my cries | |
| Shook and rent the mountain-side; | 70 |
| Lustres, decades, centuries | |
| Fled while daily there I died. | |
| |
| But my essence and intent | |
| Ripen’d in the smelting fire; | |
| Flame became my element, | 75 |
| Agony my soul’s desire. | |
| |
| Twenty centuries of Pain | |
| Mightier than Love or Art, | |
| Woke the meaning in my brain | |
| And the purpose of my heart. | 80 |
| |
| Straightway then aloft I swam | |
| Through the mountain’s sulphurous sty: | |
| Not eternal death could damn | |
| Such a hardy soul as I. | |
| |
| From the mountain’s burning crest | 85 |
| Like a god I come again, | |
| And with an immortal zest | |
| Challenge Fate to throw the main. | |
| |
