Disenchantment

Glides the shadow round the dial, Youth and Hope have almost flown, Vainly fade my days like water, On the sandy desert thrown. On the Tree of Life the verdure, Leaf by leaf decaying, dies; And a low prophetic murmur In its waving branches sighs. At its roots the Nornas sitting, Chant, by turns, their solemn hymn; In its shadow dreams are brooding, As at old Dodona dim.

Once like trodden vintage foaming, Through my veins the life-blood rolled, Fiery visions flashed around me, Such as blinded prophets old. Cold and dark the golden mountains, Which of yore environed me; From the star its sheen has faded, From the blossom and the tree. Gazing westward in the sunset, I no longer can descry Tents of Paladins, in clusters, Pitched against the darkening sky.

They have furled their gorgeous banners, And their oriflammes uprolled, They have struck their far pavilions, Rich with purple and with gold. In the galley of Ulysses I no more at random sail, On each tenth returning sunrise Sure some stranger port to hail. Now the regions of the Lotos O’er the waters disappear; Now the meadows of the Sirens Starred with blossoms glitter near;

Now the golden ether leaving, We to lampless glooms descend, Where the Shadows of the Weary Through the umbered spaces wend. With “the blind old man” I wandered On the soft Ionian shore, Danced at harvest feasts in autumn, While the oak tree arched me o’er; Through the streets of Asian cities, Lit with nuptial tapers trod, Where in star-light flamed the altars Of the yellow-buskined god.

All the dark-eyed tribes of Hellas I could visit, one by one, In their agorai I gossipped With the idlers in the sun; At the school of old Crotona Heard the Samian recite, How the eternal Monad flowers Into blossoms infinite; How from shape to shape forever Silent, serpent-like it glides, On a starred, unresting circle, In its pilgrimages rides.

At the city of Glaucopis, ’Neath the olive trees I lay, While the bird of Itys warbled Through the livelong summer day, And at moon-rise, decked with garlands, Lay reclined in that alcove, Where harangued the Man-Silenus On the genesis of Love. Fast the wine and wit were flowing, Mid the banquet’s joyous din; At the door, the son of Clinias, Crowned and drunken, gazing in.

Or at morning, in some stoa, Heard the Sage, as in his toils He immeshed the wordy sophists Come to dazzle from the Isles. In the house of Thespis sitting, On upæthric seats of stone, Saw the tribes of birds collected In a kingdom of their own; In a quaint ethereal city, Full of many-tinted plumes, Which in mid-air intercepted Jove’s refection, altar-fumes.

But the portals of Athenæ I no longer wander through, To her Owl and to her Bema I have bid a long adieu. Cities thronged with breathing beings— Not the pavements of the dead— For the future I must frequent, For the future I must tread. Though their streets have not the glory, Which the towns of Hellas wore, In them I must toil and battle, Till the fret and din are o’er.

Till the clamor of the Present In the eternal silence dies, And my frame, but dust and ruin, In its final chamber lies, With the vanished and forgotten, With the lovely and the brave, Who have sunken through the Ages, To the quiet of the grave. There the eye of love shall vainly Through the red earth seek to pry, There the grass and night winds only True to sorrow ever sigh.