VI. TO AN OUTRAGEOUS PERSON

God forgive you, O my friend!

For, be sure, men never will.

Their most righteous wrath shall bend

Toward you all the strokes of ill.

You are outcast—Who could bear,

Laboring dully, to behold

That glad carelessness you wear,

Dancing down the sunlight’s gold?

Who, a self-discovered slave,

As the burdens on him press,

Could but curse you, arrant knave,

For your crime of happiness?

All the dogmas of our life

Are confuted by your fling,—

Taking dullness not to wife,

But with wonder wantoning.

All the good and great of earth,

Prophecying your bad end,

Sourly watch you dance in mirth

Up the rainbow, O my friend!

Across the polished board, wet and ashine,

Appalling incantations late have passed.—

For some, the mercy of dull anodyne;

For others, hope destined an hour to last.

Here has been sold courage to lift the weak

That they embrace a great and noble doom.

Here some have bought a clue they did not seek

Into the wastes of an engulfing gloom.

And amorous tears, and high indignant hate,

Laughter, desires, passions, and hopes, and rest,—

The drunkard’s sleep, the poet’s shout to fate,—

All from these bottles filled a human breast!

Magician of the apron! Let us see—

What is that draught you are shaking now for me?