THE GARDEN OF EPICURUS I

As dreamers through their dreams surmise

The stealthy passage of the night,

We half-remember smoky skies

And city streets and hurrying flight,

Another world from this clear height

Whereon our starry altars rise.

Beneath our towering waste of stone

The fragile ships creep to and fro,

By tempest riven and overthrown,

The toys of these same tides that flow

Against our pillars far below

With faint, insistent monotone.

The snarling winds against our rocks

Hurl breakers in a fleecy mass,

Like wolves that chase stampeding flocks

Over the brink of a crevasse,

While thunders down the Alpine pass

The deluge of the equinox.

Lost in that stormy atmosphere,

Men chart their seas and trudge their roads;

Inviolate, we scorn to hear

Their shouted warning that forebodes

An end to these fair episodes

Of life beneath our tranquil sky;

Having sought only peace, then why

Should we go down to death with fear?