70 What of despair, of rapture, of derision,
What of life is there, what of ill or good?
Are the fruits grey like dust or bright like blood?
Does the dim ground grow any seed of ours, The faint fields quicken any terrene0 root, earthly
75 In low lands where the sun and moon are mute
And all the stars keep silence? Are there flowers
At all, or any fruit?
8
Alas, but though my flying song flies after,
O sweet strange elder singer, thy more fleet
so Singing, and footprints of thy fleeter feet,
Some dim derision of mysterious laughter
From the blind tongueless warders of the dead,
Some gainless glimpse of Proserpine's9 veiled head,
Some little sound of unregarded tears
85 Wept by effaced unprofitable eyes,
And from pale mouths some cadence of dead sighs?
These only, these the hearkening spirit hears,
Sees only such things rise. 9
Thou art far too far for wings of words to follow,
90 Far too far off for thought or any prayer.
8. An allusion to Baudelaire's 'La Geante' ('The 9. Queen of the underworld. Giantess').
.
AVE ATQUE VALE / 1503
What ails us with thee, who are wind and air?
What ails us gazing where all seen is hollow?
Yet with some fancy, yet with some desire,
Dreams pursue death as winds a flying fire,
95 Our dreams pursue our dead and do not find.
Still, and more swift than they, the thin flame flies,
The low light fails us in elusive skies,
Still the foiled earnest ear is deaf, and blind
Are still the eluded eyes.
10 100 Not thee, O never thee, in all time's changes,
Not thee, but this the sound of thy sad soul,
The shadow of thy swift spirit, this shut scroll
I lay my hand on, and not death estranges
My spirit from communion of thy song?
io5 These memories and these melodies that throng
Veiled porches of a Muse funereal1? These I salute, these touch, these clasp and fold
As though a hand were in my hand to hold,
Or through mine ears a mourning musical2
110 Of many mourners rolled.
11 I among these, I also, in such station
As when the pyre was charred, and piled the sods,
And offering to the dead made, and their gods,
The old mourners had, standing to make libation,
us I stand, and to the gods and to the dead
Do reverence without prayer or praise, and shed
