"Children of pleasure are we: the whole of our life is a play;
With white breasts, music, and wine we while the hours away.
You scorn and revile us and hate us, would put us to torture and shame,
You virtuous! Ah, well! We will not pause in the game,
To be bitter in our turn on you and wax hot. Not we! for we know
Life is too short for such folly. Away all pother and woe!
Think not of the After! Drink deep of the Present! This world's good enough;
Has infinite sweets: fool he that follows the way that is rough!
"The maudlin sage drones out, 'All pleasure is vain.' Let him try!
He will weep and rend his clothes with regret that he did deny
These rapturous joys to himself through so many pitiful years.
What do we know of the After? Why brood upon it with fears?
The Now is enough for the wise. Come, ye daughters of joy!
Help me to live as one should. Let thy white feet glance in my hall:
Of all the gifts of the good gods, ye are the sweetest of all!
"Hark to the sour recluse! He says, 'Woman's a perilous toy,'
That 'the girl is selfish and false, and follows the luck of the dice,
Smells gold afar off as a vulture, with caresses feigned for the rich,
And when the gold is all gone will let her love die in a ditch.'
"A liar! a coward he! that fears what he does not know.
'Tis the cold, not the fierce Bacchante's blood, the red gold mastereth so.
"For we too have died for each other—we 'selfish' children of vice,
Our passionate kisses are warm, yea warmer than virtue can tell.
Ho! ho! while I live, I will live, nor give thought to God or his hell!"
II.
NOW.
"Cold is the wind and the rain of the autumn night in the street.
My rags are so thin. Chill death ascends from my sodden feet.
Up to my heart. What care I? For I can laugh at the cold.
My head is hot; my blood boils. I have just met a friend of old.
I was proud, I was dying for food, yet dared not beg for a crust;
But he asked me to drink, and I drank—and now I feel as a god,
As a god who has something to give, and so can rule with a nod.
"I stand by a well-known house, a house of gambling and lust,
Where in the bright-lit rooms, men flushed with the fever of play
Win and lose. If they win, the she-devils rake it away.
Win and lose. If they lose, they must out in the cold and die;
Or if they be callous and tough, why, then become even as I.
"Ah, me! for yon beautiful woman. Ah, me! for the passionless mart
Ah, me! for the soft, warm flesh that covers the cold, hard heart.
He was lucky to-night at play; look at her wanton grace:
The kisses, the toying hands, the flushed and amorous face,
The moist lips lying of love!—she will lead him up to the gate
Of Ruin and Death and Hell, and leave him there to his fate.
With a low and musical laugh, as of silver as hard and as cold,
At his folly to think she could love—she has treated so many of old.