The Three Taverns | Page 8

to grammarians;
And when you
seem, as many a time you may,
To have no other friend than hope,
remember
That you are not the first, or yet the last.
The best of life, until we see beyond
The shadows of ourselves (and
they are less
Than even the blindest of indignant eyes
Would have
them) is in what we do not know.
Make, then, for all your fears a
place to sleep
With all your faded sins; nor think yourselves

Egregious and alone for your defects
Of youth and yesterday. I was
young once;
And there's a question if you played the fool
With a
more fervid and inherent zeal
Than I have in my story to remember,

Or gave your necks to folly's conquering foot,
Or flung yourselves
with an unstudied aim,
Less frequently than I. Never mind that.

Man's little house of days will hold enough,
Sometimes, to make him
wish it were not his,
But it will not hold all. Things that are dead

Are best without it, and they own their death
By virtue of their dying.
Let them go, --
But think you not the world is ashes yet,
And you
have all the fire. The world is here
Today, and it may not be gone
tomorrow;
For there are millions, and there may be more,
To make
in turn a various estimation
Of its old ills and ashes, and the traps

Of its apparent wrath. Many with ears
That hear not yet, shall have
ears given to them,
And then they shall hear strangely. Many with
eyes
That are incredulous of the Mystery

Shall yet be driven to feel,
and then to read
Where language has an end and is a veil,
Not
woven of our words. Many that hate
Their kind are soon to know that
without love
Their faith is but the perjured name of nothing.
I that
have done some hating in my time
See now no time for hate; I that
have left,
Fading behind me like familiar lights
That are to shine no

more for my returning,
Home, friends, and honors, -- I that have lost
all else
For wisdom, and the wealth of it, say now
To you that out
of wisdom has come love,
That measures and is of itself the measure

Of works and hope and faith. Your longest hours
Are not so long
that you may torture them
And harass not yourselves; and the last
days
Are on the way that you prepare for them,
And was prepared
for you, here in a world
Where you have sinned and suffered, striven
and seen.
If you be not so hot for counting them
Before they come
that you consume yourselves,
Peace may attend you all in these last
days --
And me, as well as you. Yes, even in Rome.
Well, I have
talked and rested, though I fear
My rest has not been yours; in which
event,
Forgive one who is only seven leagues
From Caesar. When I
told you I should come,
I did not see myself the criminal
You
contemplate, for seeing beyond the Law
That which the Law saw not.
But this, indeed,
Was good of you, and I shall not forget;
No, I shall
not forget you came so far
To meet a man so dangerous. Well,
farewell.
They come to tell me I am going now --
With them. I hope
that we shall meet again,
But none may say what he shall find in
Rome.
Demos I
All you that are enamored of my name
And least intent on what most
I require,
Beware; for my design and your desire,
Deplorably, are
not as yet the same.
Beware, I say, the failure and the shame
Of
losing that for which you now aspire
So blindly, and of hazarding
entire
The gift that I was bringing when I came.
Give as I will, I cannot give you sight
Whereby to see that with you
there are some
To lead you, and be led. But they are dumb
Before
the wrangling and the shrill delight

Of your deliverance that has not
come,
And shall not, if I fail you -- as I might.
Demos II

So little have you seen of what awaits
Your fevered glimpse of a
democracy
Confused and foiled with an equality
Not equal to the
envy it creates,
That you see not how near you are the gates
Of an
old king who listens fearfully
To you that are outside and are to be

The noisy lords of imminent estates.
Rather be then your prayer that you shall have
Your kingdom
undishonored. Having all,
See not the great among you for the small,

But hear their silence; for the few shall save
The many, or the
many are to fall --
Still to be wrangling in a noisy grave.
The Flying Dutchman
Unyielding in the pride of his defiance,
Afloat with none to serve or
to command,
Lord of himself at last, and all by Science,
He seeks
the Vanished Land.
Alone, by the one light of his one thought,
He steers to find the shore
from which we came, --
Fearless of in what coil he may be caught

On seas that have no name.
Into the night he sails; and after night
There is a dawning, though
there be no sun;
Wherefore, with nothing but