Ah! you, from the small high-walled acre of your lives...

Ah! you, from the small high-walled acre of your lives,

Your windows only looking upon gardens,

Only perceiving love and death and truth

As facts that come to pass,

That pass and leave you still

Within your safe small prisons,

Older, duller,

To walk and talk among the evergreens.

You have never known

Delight of dying slowly,

Poisoned with raptures

In many hues from the slim-cut decanters of death —

The tunes

That dishevel and smooth,

Cajole and melancholize —

The dance

Which is a whirling of leaves

In their last scorn of sorrow

Flung upwards by the wind

Into the haggard face of winter —

Nor felt your souls go blowing like balloons

Tossed by impulsive hands;

Nor slid as skaters swiftly

Over the crackling crystals of perilous ice,

Buffeted with bouquets and blinded with confetti...

You have not felt the abandon

Of light love

Dragged by the hair across a slippery floor....