Why not love sorrow and the glance
That ends in silent tears?
If we count up the world's mischance,
Grieving is in arrears.

Why should I know why I could weep?
The old urns cannot read
The names they wear of kings they keep
In ashes; both are dead.

And like an urn the heart must hold
Aims of an age gone by:
What the aims were we are not told;
We hold them, who knows why?




THE GHOSTS OF REVELLERS.


At purple eyes beside the grain,
Our loves on altars we had burned,
And mixed our tribute with the dew,
Our tears, when rosy dawn returned.

Our voices we had joined with song
Of bird ecstatic, light, and free;
Our laughter rollicked with the brook
Running through darkness merrily.