By M. A.
Yes, in the stream and stress of things,
That breaks around us like the sea,
There comes to Peasants and to Kings,
The solemn Hour of Jubilee.
If they, till strenuous Nature give
Some fifty harvests, chance to live!
Ah, Fifty harvests! But the corn
Is grown beside the barren main,
Is salt with sea-spray, blown and borne
Across the green unvintaged plain.
And life, lived out for fifty years,
Is briny with the spray of tears!
Ah, such is Life, to us that live
Here, in the twilight of the Gods,
Who weigh each gift the world can give,
And sigh and murmur, What’s the odds
So long’s you’re happy? Nay, what Man
Finds Happiness since Time began?
Ode of Jubilee.
By A. C. S.
Me, that have sung and shrieked, and foamed in praise of Freedom,
Me do you ask to sing
Parochial pomps, and waste, the wail of Jubileedom
For Queen, or Prince, or King!
* * * * *
Nay, by the foam that fleeting oars have feathered,
In Grecian seas;
Nay, by the winds that barques Athenian weathered—
By all of these
I bid you each be mute, Bards tamed and tethered,
And fee’d with fees!
For you the laurel smirched, for you the gold, too,
Of Magazines;
For me the Spirit of Song, unbought, unsold to
Pale Priests or Queens!