TWENTIETH-CENTURY HARLEQUINADE
Fate, malign dotard, weary from his days,
Too old for memory, yet craving pleasure,
Now finds the night too long and bitter cold
—Reminding him of death—the sun too hot.
The beauty of the universe he hates,
Yet stands regarding earthly carnivals:
The clatter and the clang of car and train,
The hurrying throng of homeward-going men,
The cries of children, colour of the streets,
Their whistling and their shouting and their joy,
The lights, the trees, the fanes and towers of churches,
Thanksgiving for the sun, the moon, the earth,
The labour, love, and laughter of our lives.
He thinks they mock his age with ribaldry.
From far within his æon-battered brain
Well up those wanton wistful images
That first beguiled the folk of Bergamo.
Now like himself, degraded and distress'd,
They sink to ignominy; but the clown
Remains, reminder of their former state,
And still earns hurricanes of hoarse applause.
This dotard now decides to end the earth
(Wrecked by its own and his futility).
Recalls the formula of world-broad mirth
—A senseless hitting of those unaware,
Unnecessary breaking of their chattels.
The pantomime of life is near its close:
The stage is strewn with ends and bits of things,
With mortals maim'd or crucified, and left
To gape at endless horror through eternity.
The face of Fate is wet with other paint
Than that incarnadines the human clown:
Yet still he waves a bladder, red as gold,
And still he gaily hits about with it,
And still the dread revealing limelight plays
Till the whole sicken'd scene becomes afire.
Antic himself falls on the funeral pyre
Of twisted, tortured, mortifying men.
March, 1916.
To HELEN