12. EPILOGUE.
As on the plain shoot up the wheatstalks
So do the thoughts in the spirit of man
Grow up and waver;
But the gentle thoughts of the poet
Are as the red and blue-colour’d flowers
Merrily blooming between them.
Red and blue-colour’d flowers!
The surly reaper rejects you as useless,
Wooden flails all-scornfully thresh you,
Even the needy traveller,
Whom your sight rejoices and quickens,
Shaketh his head,
And calleth you pretty weeds;
But the rustic virgin,
The twiner of garlands,
Doth honour and pluck you,
And with you decketh her beauteous locks,
And thus adorn’d, makes haste to the dance,
Where pipes and fiddles sweetly are sounding,
Or to the silent beech-tree,
Where the voice of the loved one still sweeter doth sound
Than pipes or than fiddles.
MONOLOGUE.
(From Book “Le Grand.”)
In olden legends, golden castles stood
Where harps were sounding, beauteous maidens danced,
And spruce attendants flash’d, and jessamine
And rose and myrtle shed their fragrance round—
And yet one single word of disenchantment
Made all this splendour in a moment vanish,
And nought remain’d behind but olden ruins
And croaking birds of night and drear morass.
So have I, too, with but one single word,
All Nature’s blooming glories disenchanted.
There lies she now, as lifeless, cold, and pale
As some bedizen’d regal corpse might be,
Whose cheekbones have been colour’d red by art,
And in whose hand a sceptre hath been placed.
His lips however wither’d look and yellow,
For they forgot to dye them red as well;
And mice are springing o’er his regal nose,
And ridicule the pond’rous golden sceptre.