The Collected Works | Page 9

Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget--lest we forget!
For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard--

All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And guarding calls not Thee to
guard.
For frantic boast and foolish word,
Thy Mercy on Thy People, Lord!

Amen.
THE VAMPIRE
The verses--as suggested by the painting by Philip Burne Jones, first
exhibited at the new gallery in London in 1897.
A fool there was and he made his prayer
(Even as you and I!)
To a
rag and a bone and a hank of hair
(We called her the woman who did
not care),
But the fool he called her his lady fair
(Even as you and
I!)
Oh the years we waste and the tears we waste
And the work of our
head and hand,
Belong to the woman who did not know
(And now
we know that she never could know)
And did not understand.
A fool there was and his goods he spent
(Even as you and I!)
Honor
and faith and a sure intent
But a fool must follow his natural bent

(And it wasn't the least what the lady meant),
(Even as you and I!)
Oh the toil we lost and the spoil we lost
And the excellent things we
planned,
Belong to the woman who didn't know why
(And now we
know she never knew why)
And did not understand.
The fool we stripped to his foolish hide
(Even as you and I!)
Which
she might have seen when she threw him aside--
(But it isn't on
record the lady tried)
So some of him lived but the most of him died--

(Even as you and I!)
And it isn't the shame and it isn't the blame
That stings like a white
hot brand.
It's coming to know that she never knew why
(Seeing at last she
could never know why)
And never could understand.
TO THE UNKNOWN GODDESS

Will you conquer my heart with your beauty; my soul going out from
afar? Shall I fall to your hand as a victim of crafty and cautious shikar?
Have I met you and passed you already, unknowing, unthinking and
blind? Shall I meet you next session at Simla, O sweetest and best of
your kind?
Does the P. and O. bear you to meward, or, clad in short frocks in the
West, Are you growing the charms that shall capture and torture the
heart in my breast?
Will you stay in the Plains till September--my passion as warm as the
day? Will you bring me to book on the Mountains, or where the
thermantidotes play?
When the light of your eyes shall make pallid the mean lesser lights I
pursue, And the charm of your presence shall lure me from love of the
gay "thirteentwo";
When the peg and the pig-skin shall please not; when I buy me
Calcutta-build clothes;
When I quit the Delight of Wild Asses;
forswearing the swearing of oaths ; As a deer to the hand of the hunter
when I turn 'mid the gibes of my friends; When the days of my freedom
are numbered, and the life of the bachelor ends.
Ah, Goddess! child, spinster, or widow--as of old on Mars Hill whey
they raised
To the God that they knew not an altar--so I, a young
Pagan, have praised The Goddess I know not nor worship; yet, if half
that men tell me be true, You will come in the future, and therefore
these verses are written to you.
THE RUPAIYAT OF OMAR KAL'VIN
[Allowing for the difference 'twixt prose and rhymed exaggeration, this
ought to reproduce the sense of what Sir A-- told the nation sometime
ago, when the Government struck from our incomes two per cent.]
Now the New Year, reviving last Year's Debt,
The Thoughtful Fisher

casteth wide his Net;
So I with begging Dish and ready Tongue

Assail all Men for all that I can get.
Imports indeed are gone with all their Dues--
Lo! Salt a Lever that I
dare not use,
Nor may I ask the Tillers in Bengal--
Surely my Kith
and Kin will not refuse!
Pay--and I promise by the Dust of Spring,
Retrenchment. If my
promises can bring
Comfort, Ye have Them now a thousandfold--

By Allah! I will promise Anything!
Indeed, indeed, Retrenchment oft before
I swore--but did I mean it
when I swore?
And then, and then, We wandered to the Hills,
And
so the Little Less became Much More.
Whether a Boileaugunge or Babylon,
I know not how the wretched
Thing is done,
The Items of Receipt grow surely small;
The Items
of Expense mount one by one.
I cannot help it. What have I to do
With One and Five, or Four, or
Three, or Two?
Let Scribes spit Blood and Sulphur as they please,

Or Statesmen call me foolish--Heed not you.
Behold, I promise--Anything You will.
Behold, I greet you with an
empty Till--
Ah! Fellow-Sinners, of your Charity
Seek not the
Reason of the Dearth, but fill.
For if I sinned and fell, where lies the Gain
Of Knowledge?