Collected Works (Vol. II)

ASCENSION DAY 145 Or, cradle be hardship, and finally coffin, ease, Love being filth ? let us ask Aristophanes ! Or, heaven’s sun bake us, while Earth’s bugs and fleas kill us, Love the God’s scourge? I refer you to Aeschylus! (Nay! that’s a slip! Say we “ Earth’s grim device, cool loss !—” Better the old Greek orthography !—Aischulos ! 14) Or, love be God’s champagne’s foam; death in man’s trough, hock lees, - Pathos our port’s beeswing ? what answers Sophocles? Brief, with love’s medicine let’s draught, bolus, globule us! 40 45 60 55 60 65 Wise and succinct bids, I think, Aristobulus.! Whether my Muse be Euterpe or Clio, Life, Death, and Love are all Batrachomyo !6— Machia, what? ho! old extinct Alcibiades? For me, do ut—God true, be mannikin har !—des ! It’s rather hard, isn’t it, sir, to make sense of it? Mine of so many pounds—pouch even pence of it?!” Try something easier,!8 where the bard seems to me Seeking that light, which I find come in dreams to me. Even as he takes two feasts to enlarge upon, So will I do too to Jaunch my old barge upon. Analyse, get hints from Newton ! or Faraday,” Use every weapon—love, scorn, reason, parody ! Just where he worships? Ah me! shall his soul, Far in some glory, take hurt from a mole Grubbing i’ th’ ground? Shall his spirit not see, Lightning to lightning, the spirit in me? Parody? Shall not his spirit forgive Me, who shall love him as long as I live? Love’s at its height in pure love? Nay, but after When the song’s light dissolves gently in laughter ! Then and then only the lovers may know Nothing can part them for ever. And so, Muse, hover o’er me! Apollo, above her ! I, of the Moderns, have let alone Greek.” Out of the way Intuition shall shove her. Spirit and Truth in my darkness I seek. Little by little they bubble and leak ; Such as I have to the world I discover. Words—are they weak ones at best? They shall speak ! VOL, IL K Apology of poet. Skeleton of poem. Valu- able fact for use of lovers. Invocation. Imperfect scholastic at- tainments of author reme- died by his great spiritual insight. His intention.