And seeming-solid walls of use
Pour, Bacchus! the remembering wine;
Retrieve the loss of me and mine!
Vine for vine be antidote,
And the grape requite the lote !
Haste to cure the old despair,—
Reason in Nature's lotus drenched,
The memory of ages quenched ;
Give them again to shine;
Let wine repair what this undid;
And where the infection slid,
A dazzling memory revive;
Refresh the faded tints,
Recut the aged prints,
And write my old adventures with the pen
Which on the first day drew,
Upon the tablets blue,
The dancing Pleiads and eternal men.
VIRTUE runs before the Muse,
And defies her skill;
She is rapt, and doth refuse
To wait a painter's will.
Star-adoring, occupied,
Virtue cannot bend her
Just to please a poet's pride,
To parade her splendour.
The bard must be with good intent
No more his, but hers;
Must throw away his pen and paint,
Kneel with worshippers,
Then, perchance, a sunny ray
From the heaven of fire,
His lost tools may overpay,
And better his desire.
HAT'care I, so they stand the same,—
Things of the heavenly mind,—
How long the power to give them name
Tarries yet behind?
Thus far to-day your favours reach,
O fair, appeasing presences!
Ye taught my lips a single speech,
And a thousand silences.
Space grants beyond his fated road
No inch to the god of day;
And copious language still bestowed
One word, no more, to say.
Can build as the Muse can;
She is skilful to select
Materials for her plan;
Slow and warily to choose
Rafters of immortal pine,
Or cedar incorruptible,
Worthy her design.
She threads dark Alpine forests
Or valleys by the sea,
In many lands, with painful steps,
Ere she can find a tree,
She ransacks mines and ledges,
And quarries every rock,
To hew the famous adamant
For each eternal block.
She lays her beams in music,
In music every one,
To the cadence of the whirling world
Which dances round the sun;
That so they shall not be displaced
By lapses or by wars,
But, for the love of happy souls,
Outlive the newest stars.
In ocean sport the scaly herds,
Wedge-like cleave the air the birds,
To northern lakes fly wind-borne ducks,
Browse the mountain sheep in flocks,
Men consort in camp and town,
But the poet dwells alone.
God, who gave to him the lyre,
Of all mortals the desire,
For all breathing men's behoof,
Straitly charged him, “Sit aloof;
Annexed a warning, poets say,
To the bright premium,-
Ever, when twain together play,
Shall the harp be dumb.
Many may come,
But one shall sing ;
Two touch the string,
The harp is dumb.
Though there come a million,
Wise Saadi dwells alone.
Yet Saadi loved the race of men,—
No churl, immured in cave or den;
In bower and hall
He wants them all,
Nor can dispense
With Persia for his audience;
They must give ear,
Grow red with joy and white with fear;
But he has no companion;
Come ten, or come a million,
Good Saadi dwells alone.
Be thou ware where Saadi dwells:
Wisdom of the gods is he,
Entertain it reverently.
Gladly round that golden lamp
Sylvan deities encamp,
And simple maids and noble youth
Are welcome to the man of truth.
Most welcome they who need him most, They feed the spring which they exhaust: For greater need
Draws better deed:
But, critic, spare thy vanity,
Nor show thy pompous parts,
To vex with odious subtlety
The cheerer of men's hearts.
Sad-eyed Fakirs swiftly say
Endless dirges to decay,
Never in the blaze of light
Lose the shudder of midnight;
Pale at overflowing noon
Hear wolves barking at the moon ;
In the bower of dalliance sweet
Hear the far Avenger's feet;
And shake before those awful Powers,
Who in their pride forgive not ours.
Thus the sad-eyed Fakirs preach:
"Bard, when thee would Allah teach,
And lift thee to his holy mount,
He sends thee from his bitter fount
Wormwood, saying, 'Go thy ways,
Drink not the Malaga of praise,
But do the deed thy fellows hate,
And compromise thy peaceful state;
Smite the white breasts which thee fed,
Stuff sharp thorns beneath the head
Of them thou shouldst have comforted;
For out of woe and out of crime
Draws the heart a lore sublime.'
And yet it seemeth not to me
That the high gods love tragedy;
For Saadi sat in the sun,
And thanks was his contrition;
For haircloth and for bloody whips,
Had active hands and smiling lips;
And yet his runes he rightly read,
And to his folk his message sped.
Sunshine in his heart transferred
Lighted each transparent word,
And well could honouring Persia learn
What Saadi wished to say;
For Saadi's nightly stars did burn
Brighter than Jami's day.
Whispered the Muse in Saadi's cot:
"O gentle Saadi, listen not,
Tempted by thy praise of wit,
Or by thirst and appetite
For the talents not thine own,
To sons of contradiction.
Never, son of eastern morning,
Follow falsehood, follow scorning.
Denounce who will, who will deny,
And pile the hills to scale the sky;
Let theist, atheist, pantheist,
Define and wrangle how they list,
Fierce conserver, fierce destroyer,-
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