THE IMMORTAL
King and priest and poet met
In a garden, arbor set,
On a green hill by the sea
Where the waves lapped tenderly,
Crooning to the restless sands
Lullabies of distant lands.
From the stately palace near
Rippling music smote the ear,
Mingled with the solemn bell
Of the monks that matins tell
’Neath the censer swinging slow
In the ancient church below.
Dawn, with rosy fingertips
Reached to Day, her lingering lips
Pressed upon the dead Night’s brow;
As we mortals, too, somehow,
Turn us in the past to grope
Ere we grasp the hand of Hope.
Spake the king, as wistfully
He looked out across the sea
Sparkling in the growing light:
“Ah! the morning-promise bright!
Bright as life, whose morning glow
Shadows but to dusk we know!
Is it then a little striving,
Ending at the last in nothing?
Lieth there a fairer day
Past Death’s night, O poet, say?
Priest, what sayeth your heart’s need,
Standing clear of myth and creed?
Said the priest: “Man is the flower
Of creation’s natal hour;
He earth’s lord—and yet earth’s sorrow
Presseth him, till he must borrow
Joy from some half-guessed tomorrow—
If his making be not jest;
Or a mockery, at best.
You who rule and I who pray,
Shut from common strife away,
Still find in our life’s brief cup
Tears and wormwood welling up;
Vain would our existence be
Without immortality.”
Lightly then the poet laughed
As the ruddy wine he quaffed:
“What is immortality
To the butterfly or bee?
Yet life’s sweetest sweets are theirs,
Summer suns and summer airs;
Skyward still the brown larks climb
And the ring doves in the lime
Wake the roses with their cooing,
Silence into sweetness wooing;
And the grass is glad in growing
For the white flocks hillward going.
“E’en with gifts of sorrow’s giving
There is joy enough in living;
Heart-kept joys in every day
No ill chance can take away.
Truth and beauty are immortal,
And if we tomorrow’s portal
Should not pass, yet men may say:
“He lived kindly yesterday;
Sought no evil, thought no ill;
So we keep his memory still,
As a lamp our feet to guide
Till the ebbing of the tide
Calls us seaward in the dark.”
Look you, brothers, if a spark
Of eternal fire be caught
In these bodies weakly wrought,
Let it flame to noble deeds
For our present, human needs—
So from life itself may we
Build our immortality.”