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THE TOAST OF DESPAIR

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We have cried—and the Gods are silent;

We have trusted—and been betrayed;

We have loved—and the fruit was ashes;

We have given—the gift was weighed.

We know that the heavens are empty,

That friendship and love are names;

That truth is an ashen cinder,

The end of life's burnt-out flames.

Vainly and long have we waited,

Through the night of the human roar,

For a single song on the harp of Hope,

Or a ray from a day-lit shore.

Songs aye come floating, marvelous sweet,

And bow-dyed flashes gleam;

But the sweets are Lies, and the weary feet

Run after a marsh-light beam.

In the hour of our need the song departs,

And the sea-moans of sorrow swell;

The siren mocks with a gurgling laugh

That is drowned in the deep death-knell.

The light we chased with our stumbling feet

As the goal of happier years,

Swings high and low and vanishes—

The bow-dyes were of our tears.

God is a lie, and Faith is a lie,

And a tenfold lie is Love;

Life is a problem without a why,

And never a thing to prove.

It adds, and subtracts, and multiplies,

And divides without aim or end;

Its answers all false, though false-named true—

Wife, husband, lover, friend.

We know it now, and we care no more;

What matters life or death?

We tiny insects emerge from earth,

Suffer, and yield our breath.

Like ants we crawl on our brief sand-hill,

Dreaming of "mighty things,"—

Lo, they crunch, like shells in the ocean's wrath,

In the rush of Time's awful wings.

The sun smiles gold, and the planets white,

And a billion stars smile, still;

Yet, fierce as we, each wheels towards death,

And cannot stay his will.

Then build, ye fools, your mighty things,

That Time shall set at naught;

Grow warm with the song the sweet Lie sings,

And the false bow your tears have wrought.

For us, a truce to Gods, loves, and hopes,

And a pledge to fire and wave;

A swifter whirl to the dance of death,

And a loud huzza for the Grave!

Philadelphia, 1892.

IN MEMORIAM

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(To Dyer D. Lum, my friend and teacher, who died April 6, 1893.)

Great silent heart! These barren drops of grief

Are not for you, attained unto your rest;

This sterile salt upon the withered leaf

Of love, is mine—mine the dark burial guest.

Far, far within that deep, untroubled sea

We watched together, walking on the sands,

Your soul has melted—painless, silent, free;

Mine the wrung heart, mine the clasped, useless hands.

Into the whirl of life, where none remember,

I bear your image, ever unforgot;

The "Whip-poor-will," still "wailing in December,"

Cries the same cry—cries, cries, and ceases not.

The future years with all their waves of faces

Roll shoreward singing the great undertone;

Yours is not there;—in the old, well-loved places

I look, and pass, and watch the sea alone.

Alone along the gleaming, white sea-shore,

The sea-spume spraying thick around my head,

Through all the beat of waves and winds that roar,

I go, remembering that you are dead.

That you are dead, and nowhere is there one

Like unto you;—and nowhere Love leaps Death;—

And nowhere may the broken race be run;—

Nowhere unsealed the seal that none gainsaith.

Yet in my ear that deep, sweet undertone

Grows deeper, sweeter, solemner to me—

Dreaming your dreams, watching the light that shone

So whitely to you, yonder, on the sea.

Your voice is there, there in the great life-sound—

Your eyes are there, out there, within the light;

Your heart, within the pulsing Race-heart drowned,

Beats in the immortality of Right.

O Life, I love you for the love of him

Who showed me all your glory and your pain!

"Unto Nirvana"—so the deep tones sing—

And there—and there—we—shall—be—one—again.

Greensburg, Pa., April 9th, 1893.