THE TAVERN OF DESPAIR

THE wraiths of murdered hopes and loves

Come whispering at the door,

Come creeping through the weeping mist

That drapes the barren moor;

But we within have turned the key

‘ Gainst Hope and Love and Care,

Where Wit keeps tryst with Folly, at

The Tavern of Despair.

And we have come by divers ways

To keep this merry tryst,

But few of us have kept within

The Narrow Way, I wist;

For we are those whose ampler wits

And hearts have proved our curse —

Foredoomed to ken the better things

And aye to do the worse!

Long since we learned to mock ourselves;

And from self-mockery fell

To heedless laughter in the face

Of Heaven, Earth, and Hell.

We quiver‘ neath, and mock, God's rod;

We feel, and mock, His wrath;

We mock our own blood on the thorns

That rim the “Primrose Path.”

We mock the eerie glimmering shapes

That range the outer wold,

We mock our own cold hearts because

They are so dead and cold;

We flout the things we might have been

Had self to self proved true,

We mock the roses flung away,

We mock the garnered rue;

The fates that gibe have lessoned us;

There sups to-night on earth

No madder crew of wastrels than

This fellowship of mirth....

( Of mirth... drink, fools!— nor let it flag

Lest from the outer mist

Creep in that other company

Unbidden to the tryst.

We're grown so fond of paradox

Perverseness holds us thrall,

So what each jester loves the best

He mocks the most of all;

But as the jest and laugh go round,

Each in his neighbor's eyes

Reads, while he flouts his heart's desire,

The knowledge that he lies.

Not one of us but had some pearls

And flung them to the swine,

Not one of us but had some gift —

Some spark of fire divine —

Each might have been God's minister

In the temple of some art —

Each feels his gift perverted move

Wormlike through his dry heart.

If God called Azrael to Him now

And bade Death bend the bow

Against the saddest heart that beats

Here on this earth below,

Not any sobbing breast would gain

The guerdon of that barb —

The saddest ones are those that wear

The jester's motley garb.

Whose shout aye loudest rings, and whose

The maddest cranks and quips —

Who mints his soul to laughter's coin

And wastes it with his lips —

Has grown too sad for sighs and seeks

To cheat himself with mirth;

We fools self-doomed to motley are

The weariest wights on earth!

But yet, for us whose brains and hearts

Strove aye in paths perverse,

Doomed still to know the better things

And still to do the worse,—

What else is there remains for us

But make a jest of care

And set the rafters ringing, in

Our Tavern of Despair?