Читать книгу Stops Of Various Quills - William Dean Howells - Страница 4

NOVEMBER

A WEFT of leafless spray

Woven fine against the gray

Of the autumnal day,

And blurred along those ghostly garden tops

Clusters of berries crimson as the drops

That my heart bleeds when I remember

How often, in how many a far November,

Of childhood and my children's childhood I was glad,

With the wild rapture of the Fall,

Of all the beauty, and of all

The ruin, now so intolerably sad.

MIDWAY

O blithe the birds sang in the trees,

The trees sang in the wind,

I winged me with the morning breeze,

And left Care far behind.

But now both birds and trees are mute

In the hot hush of noon;

And I must up and on afoot,

Or Care will catch me soon.

TIME

O you wish me, then, away?

You should rather bid me stay:

Though I seem so dull and slow,

Think before you let me go!

Whether you entreat or spurn

I can nevermore return:

Times shall come, and times shall be,

But no other time like me.

Though I move with leaden feet,

Light itself is not so fleet;

And before you know me gone

Eternity and I are one.

FROM GENERATION TO GENERATION

I

INNOCENT spirits, bright, immaculate ghosts!

Why throng your heavenly hosts,

As eager for their birth

In this sad home of death, this sorrow-haunted earth?

Beware! Beware! Content you where you are,

And shun this evil star,

Where we who are doomed to die,

Have our brief being and pass, we know not where or why.

II

We have not to consent or to refuse;

It is not ours to choose:

We come because we must,

We know not by what law, if unjust or if just.

The doom is on us, as it is on you,

That nothing can undo ;

And all in vain you warn:

As your fate is to die, our fate is to be born.

THE BEWILDERED GUEST

WAS not asked if I should like to come.

I have not seen my host here since I came,

Or had a word of welcome in his name.

Some say that we shall never see him, and some

That we shall see him elsewhere, and then know

Why we were bid. How long I am to stay

I have not the least notion. None, they say,

Was ever told when he should come or go.

But every now and then there bursts upon

The song and mirth a lamentable noise,

A sound of shrieks and sobs, that strikes our joys

Dumb in our breasts; and then, someone is gone.

They say we meet him. None knows where or when.

We know we shall not meet him here again.

COMPANY

THOUGHT," How terrible, if I were seen

Just as in will and deed I had always been!

And if this were the fate that I must face

At the last day, and all else were God's grace,

How must I shrink and cower before them there,

Stripped naked to the soul and beggared bare

Of every rag of seeming!" Then," Why, no,"

I thought," Why should I, if the rest are so?"

HEREDITY

THAT swollen paunch you are doomed to bear

Your gluttonous grandsire used to wear;

That tongue, at once so light and dull,

Wagged in your grandam's empty skull;

That leering of the sensual eye

Your father, when he came to die,

Left yours alone; and that cheap flirt,

Your mother, gave you from the dirt

The simper which she used upon

So many men ere he was won.

Your vanity and greed and lust

Are each your portion from the dust

Of those that died, and from the tomb

Made you what you must needs become.

I do not hold you aught to blame

For sin at second hand, and shame;

Evil could but from evil spring;

And yet, away, you charnel thing!

TWELVE P.M.

O get home from some scene of gayety,