THE RISING OF THE CURTAIN

We sit before the curtain, and we heed the pleasant bustle:

The ushers hastening up the aisles, the fans’ and programmes’ rustle;

The boy that cries librettos, and the soft, incessant sound

Of talking and low laughter that buzzes all around.

How very old the drop-scene looks! A thousand times before

I've seen that blue paint dashing on that red distemper shore;

The castle and the guazzo sky, the very ilex-tree,—

They have been there a thousand years,— a thousand more shall be.

All our lives we have been waiting for that weary daub to rise;

We have peeped behind its edges, “as if we were God's spies;”

We have listened for the signal; yet still, as in our youth,

The colored screen of matter hangs between us and the truth.

When in my careless childhood I dwelt beside a wood,

I tired of the clearing where my father's cabin stood;

And of the wild young forest paths that coaxed me to explore,

Then dwindled down, or led me back to where I stood before.

But through the woods before our door a wagon track went by,

Above whose utmost western edge there hung an open sky;

And there it seemed to make a plunge, or break off suddenly,

As though beneath that open sky it met the open sea.

Oh, often have I fancied, in the sunset's dreamy glow,

That mine eyes had caught the welter of the ocean waves below;

And the wind among the pine-tops, with its low and ceaseless roar,

Was but an echo from the surf on that imagined shore.

Alas! as I grew older, I found that road led down

To no more fair horizon than the squalid factory town:

So all life's purple distances, when nearer them I came,

Have played me still the same old cheat,— the same, the same, the same!

And when, O King, the heaven departeth as a scroll,

Wilt thou once more the promise break thou madest to my soul?

Shall I see thy feasting presence thronged with baron, knight, and page?

Or will the curtain rise upon a dark and empty stage?

For lo, quick undulations across the canvas run;

The foot-lights brighten suddenly, the orchestra has done;

And through the expectant silence rings loud the prompter's bell;

The curtain shakes,— it rises. Farewell, dull world, farewell!