Читать книгу The Man with the Hoe, and Other Poems - Edwin Markham - Страница 9

​

Wail of the Wandering Dead

Table of Contents

Death, too, is a chimera and betrays,

And yet they promised we should enter rest;

Death is as empty as the cup of days,

And bitter milk is in her wintry breast.

There is no worth in any world to come,

Nor any in the world we left behind;

And what remains of all our masterdom?—

Only a cry out of the crumbling mind.

We played all comers at the old Gray Inn,

But played the King of Players to our cost.

​We played Him fair and had no chance to win:

The dice of God were loaded and we lost.

We wander, wander, and the nights come down

With starless darkness and the rush of rains;

We drift as phantoms by the songless town,

We drift as litter on the windy lanes.

Hope is the fading vision of the heart,

A mocking spirit throwing up wild hands.

She led us on with music at the start,

To leave us at dead fountains in the sands.

Now all our days are but a cry for sleep,

For we are weary of the petty strife.

Is there not somewhere in the endless deep

A place where we can lose the feel of life?

Where we can be as senseless as the dust

The night wind blows about a dried-up well?

Where there is no more labor, no more lust,

Nor any flesh to feel the Tooth of Hell?

Our feet are ever sliding, and we seem

As old and weary as the pyramids.

​Come, God of Ages, and dispel the dream,

Fold the worn hands and close the sinking lids.

There is no new road for the dead to take:

Wild hearts are we among the worlds astray—

Wild hearts are we that cannot wholly break,

But linger on though life has gone away.

We are the sons of Misery and Eld:

Come, tender Death, with all your hushing wings,

And let our broken spirits be dispelled—

Let dead men sink into the dusk of things.