Song of the Sleeper
SLEEPER rest quietly
Deep underground!
Lord of your kingdom
Of murmurous sound.
Hear the grass growing
Sweet for the mowing;
Hear the stars sing
As they travel around—
Grass blade and star dust,
You, I, and all of us,
One with the cause of us,
Deep underground!
Murmur not, sleeper!
Yours is the key
To all things that were and
To all things that be—
While the lark’s trilling,
While the grain’s filling,
Laugh with the wind
At Life’s Riddle-me-ree!
How you were born of it?
Why was the thorn of it?
Where the new morn of it?
Yours is the Key!
Sleep deeper, brother!
Sleep and forget
Red lips that trembled
Eyes that were wet—
Though love be weeping,
Turn to your sleeping,
Life has no giving
That death need regret.
Here at the end of all
Hear the Beginning call,
Life’s but death’s seneschal—
Sleep and forget!
The Tyrant
ONE comes with foot insistent to my door,
Calling my name;
Nor voice nor footstep have I heard before,
Yet clear the calling sounds and o’er and o’er—
It seems the sunlight burns along the floor
With paler flame!
“’Tis vain to call with morning on the wing,
With noon so near,
With Life a dancer in the masque of Spring
And Youth new wedded with a golden ring—
When falls the night and birds have ceased to sing
My heart may hear!
“’Tis vain to pause. Pass, friend, upon your way!
I may not heed;
Too swift the hours; too sweet, too brief the day:
Only one life, one spring, one perfect May—
I crush each moment, with its sweets to stay
Life’s joyous greed!
“Call not again! The wind is roaming by
Across the heath—
The Wind’s a tell-tale and will bear your sigh
To dim the smiling gladness of the sky