But we within have turned the key
'Gainst Hope and Love and Care,
Where Wit keeps tryst with Folly, at
The Tavern of Despair.

And we have come by divers ways
To keep this merry tryst,
But few of us have kept within
The Narrow Way, I wist;
For we are those whose ampler wits
And hearts have proved our curse--
Foredoomed to ken the better things
And aye to do the worse!

Long since we learned to mock ourselves;
And from self-mockery fell

To heedless laughter in the face
Of Heaven, Earth, and Hell.
We quiver 'neath, and mock, God's rod;
We feel, and mock, His wrath;
We mock our own blood on the thorns
That rim the "Primrose Path."

We mock the eerie glimmering shapes
That range the outer wold,
We mock our own cold hearts because
They are so dead and cold;
We flout the things we might have been
Had self to self proved true,