It seems to me a selfish thing
To pray forever for one’s self;
It seems to me like heaping pelf
In heaven by hard reckoning.
Why, I would rather stoop, and bear
My load of sin, and bear it well
And bravely down to burning hell,
Than ever pray one selfish prayer!
VIII.
The swift chameleon in the gloom—
This silence it is so profound!—
Forsakes its bough, glides to the ground,
Then up, and lies across the tomb.
It erst was green as olive-leaf,
It then grew gray as myrtle moss
The time it slid the moss across;
But now ’t is marble-white with grief.
The little creature’s hues are gone;
Here in the pale and ghostly light
It lies so pale, so panting white,—
White as the tomb it lies upon.
The two men by that nameless tomb,
And both so still! You might have said
These two men, they are also dead,
And only waiting here for room.
How still beneath the orange-bough!
How tall was one, how bowed was one!
The one was as a journey done,
The other as beginning now.
And one was young,—young with that youth
Eternal that belongs to truth;
And one was old,—old with the years
That follow fast on doubts and fears.
And yet the habit of command
Was his, in every stubborn part;
No common knave was he at heart,
Nor his the common coward’s hand.