The Rainbow and the Rose | Page 2

grates,
Scrubbing the dresser or
the floors,
Washing the greasy dinner plates,
Scouring the brasses
on the doors--
I wonder what it's all about,
And when did people first begin
To
keep the dirt and wornness out
And keep the wholesome comfort in:

How long it is since women bore
This round of wash and make and
mend,
And what God makes us do it for
And whether it will ever
end!
When God began to do His work
He made a new thing every day--

Even now He is not one to shirk,
But makes things, always some new
way
He made the earth, and sky, and sun,
The creatures of the sea
and wood,
And when his first week's work was done
He saw that it
was very good.
But He--for all He worked so fast
To finish air, and wave, and shore,

Knew that this work of His would last
For ever and for evermore.

On Saturday night He was content,
He knew that Monday would
not bring
Need for another firmament,
Another set of everything.
But though my work is easier far
Than making sky and sea and sun,

It's harder than God's labours are,
Because my work is never done.

I sweep and churn, save and contrive,
I bake and brew, I don't
complain,
But every Monday morning I've
Last Monday's work to
do again.

I'm good at work--I work away;
Always the same my work must go;

The flowers grow different every day,
That's why I like to see them
grow.
If, up in Heaven, God understood
He'd let me for my
Paradise
Make all things new and very good
And never make the
same thing twice!
THE JILTED LOVER TO HIS MOTHER.
You needn't pray for me, old lady, I don't want no one's prayer, I'm fit
and jolly as ever I was--you needn't think I care.
When I go whistling
down the road, when the warm night is falling, She needn't think I'm
whistling her, it's another girl I'm calling.
If I pass her house a dozen times, or fifty times a day,
She needn't
think I think of her, my work lies out that way. If they should tell her
I've grown thin (for that is what they've told me) This cursed weather
counts for that, and not the girl who sold me.
And if they say I'm off my feed I still can tip a can;
If I get drunk
what's that to her? I am not her young man.
I know I've had a lucky
let-off--she ain't no class, she ain't, For all she looked like a bush o'
roses and talked like a story book saint.
I never give a thought to her. Don't worry your old head,
I've quite
forgot her pretty ways and the cruel things she said, There's lots of
other gals to be had as any chap can see,
So you cheer up, you've got
no call to go and pray for me.
But all the same, if you want to pray,
you'd best pray God take care of them, For if I catch them two together,
by hell! I'll swing for the pair of them.
THE WILL TO LIVE.
SINCE Faith is a veil that has nothing behind it,
And Hope wanders
lost where no mortal can find it,
Since Love is a mirror we break in a
minute
In snatching the image our soul has cast in it,
What is the
use of the Summers and Springs,
The wave of the woods and the waft

of the wings--
Since all means nothing, and good things and ill

Make madness,--a mirage tormenting us still?
Since all the fighting, the ardent endeavour,
The heart cast bleeding
to feed the Ideal,
Are vain, vain, vain, and the one thing real
Is that
all's vain, for ever and ever;
Why then, be a man and stand back from
the strife,
Fall by the sword, but keep out of the snare;
Will but to
be--and be willing to bear
All that the gods may lay on your of life!
In the far East, where light ever dawns first,
There has man learned
how the Fates may be cheated,
How by our craft may their strength
be defeated,
Though all our best be no match for their worst!
Kill
the desire that they set in your bosom,
Long not for fruit when you
gaze on the blossom,
Dream not of flowers when you gaze on the bud,

Kill all the rebels that shout in your blood.
Sorrow and sickness,
disease and decay--
These toll the hours of Life's desolate day;

Hopes unfulfilled and forbidden delight
These are the dreams of
Life's treacherous night.
So let me image an infinite peace
Touched
with no joy but the ease of release.
Out of the eddies I climb and I
cease
Keeping, in change for this man's soul of me,
Something
which, by the eternal decree,
Is as like Nothing as Something can be!
Not to desire, to admit, to adore,
Casting the robe of the soul that you
wore
Just as the soul casts the body's robe down.
This is man's
destiny, this is man's crown.
This is the splendour, the end of the feast;

This is the light of the Star in