ZEPPELINS

Suddenly

Shutting our lips upon a jest

As we are sipping thoughts from little glasses,

A gun bursts thunder and the echoing streets

Quiver with startled terrors —

How swift runs fear: quicksilver that is free!

Now every muscle weakens, every pulse

Is set at gallop-pace and every nerve

Stretched taut with horror and a wild revolt....

How sweetly spins the world to noise of music,

How sweet to live life's arrogant adventure!

Live in a vain world wracked with a thousand pangs,

Limp in a dull street housed with crumbling dreams,

To breathe and eat and sleep and love and sigh

A little longer, oh a little year!

Forgotten prayers rise up in resurrection,

And resolutions of new wondrous lives

Choke up our hearts and fling us to our knees....

Worms creep in dreadful hunger from the ground,

The lurid silent people loved by death,

And peer into our eyes with sly forebodings

To drag our body's glory from the light.

Though all the world should fall into their cells

And lie within their larders shelf on shelf —

Yet will I toss the sheets of dust away,

Yet will I be the mistress of the sun!