Life with its Love ever haunted by Hate!
Life's laughing morrows frowned over by Fate!
Young Life's wild gladness still waylaid by Age!
All its sweet badness still mocking the sage!
What can e'er measure the joy of its strife?

What boundless leisure
Count the heaped treasure
Of woe, that's the pleasure
And beauty of Life?




V.


Once as the aureole
Day left the earth,
Faded, a twilight soul,
Memory, had birth:
Young were her sister souls, Sorrow and Mirth.

Dark mirrors are her eyes:
Wherein who gaze
See wan effulgencies
Flicker and blaze--
Lorn fleeting shadows of beautiful days.

Scan those deep mirrors well