To some unearthly revel
Of mimes, a motley crew,
’Twixt Angel-land and Devil-,
You lured me on, I knew,
And lure me still! soft whiling
The way with hopes beguiling,
While dark Despair sits smiling
Behind the eyes of you.
WHEREFORE
I would not see, yet must behold
The lie they preach in church and hall;
And question thus,—Is death then all,
And life an idle tale that’s told?
The myriad wonders art hath wrought
Men deem eternal as God’s love:
No more than shadows these shall prove,
And insubstantial, too, as thought.
And love and labor, who have gone,
Hand in close hand, and civilized
The wilderness, these shall be prized
No more than if they had not done.
Then wherefore strive? Why strain and bend
Beneath a burden so unjust—
Our works are builded of the dust,
And dust our universal end.
TRISTRAM AND ISOLT
Night, and vast caverns of rock and of iron:
Voices like water, and voices like wind:
Horror, and tempests of hail that environ
Shapes and the shadows of two who have sinned.
Wan on the whirlwind, in loathing uplifting
Faces that loved once, forever they go,
Tristram and Isolt, the lovers, go drifting,
The simmer and laughter of Hell below.