So close they lie, a skeleton might give his rotting friend a nudge
And say, “If you or I were judge, we should not moulder here alone.
“Lest we might harm our fellow-men, they prisoned us, and now exhaust,
To speed a cosmic holocaust, the blood and gold they grudged us then.
“The world had seen less misery with us for prince and presbyter,
Who sometimes knew the fools we were, and in our folly could not lie.
“But happier we who lived in scorn, and dying, passed from human thought
Than they whose sophistry has bought the curses of a race unborn.”
C. BURCHARDT
(MAGDALEN)
COMPLAINT
MY love has left me. Let my heart forget
The happy days and moments of our past
That in the future I shall not regret
The worship of a love that could not last.
Make me remember there are things apart
From dreamy love and visionary truth
And teach me to forget how once my heart
Did love with all the tenderness of youth.
Yes, teach me to forget—and how to live
Without the joy of hope. For I have seen
How every single pleasure life can give
Must needs sow seeds of misery between.
No more of love. Since at such heavy cost
It must be bought and even then be lost.