BALLAD AUTUMNAL

Hair greying, ashen eyes, uncomely ridges,

Autumn of things ill-done, and things undone:

How all that water, slipped beneath the bridges,

Chills the adieux of our defeated sun!

What paltry, unresisted jettison

Of dear hopes held, and there the graveyard West,

With mud, miasma, mastless hulks, and midges!—

We have not lived as wisely as the rest.

That wasteful trick of yours, that gust prodigious

Of dreams too great for their comparison,

Blew stars ablaze, but drowned us in the ditches.

Sad, generous, valiant, tired ephemeron!

Had we but coined the vision when it shone

We, too, had ruled, and mocked the dispossessed.

Well! we have rags, the prudent have the riches —

We have not lived as wisely as the rest.

They squeezed us, and forgot: your Je m'en fiche's

Struck in too bloodily to pass for fun.

Our bread was nibbled by the water-witches,

All that we have is given, and is gone.

Some penny, wheedled for a currant bun,

Some shirtless, soapless starveling, uncaressed,

Still thanks us for, but not our fed ambitious —

We have not lived as wisely as the rest.

Prince, lift your heart up out of Acheron,

Death bows us gravely to that cleaner test.

Yea! when all books are closed, all races run,

We may have lived as wisely as the rest.