Then, even tyrants drunk with blood and pride,
And ever vaunting poison-cup and knife,
No less than angels beauty made; they died,
But Art, their pleasure, still extols their life.
Thus power, thus gold, sought pleasure in the past
But wooed her strangely, in a different mood
—As Pallas or Minerva—things that last,
Carved both in mind and heart, in stone and wood.
Now many palaces and Tuscan towns
Crumble upon a half-deserted hill,
Slowly their stone surrenders to the flowers;
The drip and flowing of their fountains fill
The night with cool—the night that is alive
With chanting frog and owl and nightingale;
Who knows but that these things may yet contrive
To please, when tank and war-memorial fail?
Gonzaga, D'Este, Medici are gone,
Or dreary sons approach their unnoticed fall,
Top-hatted, leave a beauty-hating throne
To fawn upon a Mrs. Freudenthal,
Or find their pleasure at a football match
—Express a dullard similarity
To other ox-eyes—lifting up the latch
Upon a similar vulgarity.
For pleasure, too, is old; has lost her realm,
—Degraded to a mumbling hag—for now
Stands Golf—for pleasure—at an armoured helm,
The Cenotaph—for Youth—at iron prow!
Yet never cruelty reaped such vast reward
As in these latter days, and with such ease,
When the whole world became a slaughter-yard
And stank with crime, and reeked with foul disease.
—No crime of passion—only crime for gold,
Or crimes of rulers drunk with their stupidity;
The people walk with faces deathly cold,
Or marked and masked with their cupidity.
But Mrs. Freudenthal knows her own mind,
And means to follow up and win the game,
Seek pleasure with the others of her kind,
Who live and die alike, and share the same