Dear Lady of the lily hand, Do then our stars so clearly shine That we, who do not understand, May mock Pierrot and Columbine?
Beyond this garden-grove I see The wise, the noble and the brave In ultimate futility Go down into the grave.
And all they dreamed and all they sought, Crumbled and ashen grown, departs; And is as if they had not wrought These works with blood from out their hearts.
The nations fall, the faiths decay, The great philosophies go by,— And life lies bare, some bitter day, A charnel that affronts the sky.
The wise, the noble and the brave,— They saw and solved, as we must see And solve, the universal grave, The ultimate futility.
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Look, where beside the garden-pool A Venus rises in the grove, More suave, more debonair, more cool Than ever burned with Paphian love.
'Twas here the delicate ribboned rout Of gallants and the fair ones went Among the shadows in and out With infinite artful merriment.
Then let me take your lily hand, And let us tread, where starbeams shine, A dance; and be, and understand Pierrot and Columbine.
Arthur Davison Ficke