The Cup of Comus: Fact and Fancy

Projects in pictures on the brain.

THE CREAKING DOOR

Come in, old Ghost of all that used to be! —
You find me old,
And love grown cold,
And fortune fled to younger company:
Departed, as the glory of the day,
With friends! – And you, it seems, have come to stay. —
'T is time to pray.

Come; sit with me, here at Life's creaking door,
All comfortless. —
Think, nay! then, guess,
What was the one thing, eh? that made me poor? —
The love of beauty, that I could not bind?
My dream of truth? or faith in humankind? —
But, never mind!

All are departed now, with love and youth,
Whose stay was brief;
And left but grief
And gray regret – two jades, who tell the truth; —
Whose children – memories of things to be,
And things that failed, – within my heart, ah me!
Cry constantly.

None can turn time back, and no man delay
Death when he knocks, —
What good are clocks,
Or human hearts, to stay for us that day
When at Life's creaking door we see his smile, —
Death's! at the door of this old House of Trial? —
Old Ghost, let's wait awhile.

AT THE END OF THE ROAD

This is the truth as I see it, my dear,
Out in the wind and the rain:
They who have nothing have little to fear, —
Nothing to lose or to gain.
Here by the road at the end o' the year,
Let us sit down and drink o' our beer,
Happy-Go-Lucky and her cavalier,
Out in the wind and the rain.

Now we are old, oh isn't it fine
Out in the wind and the rain?
Now we have nothing why snivel and whine? —
What would it bring us again? —
When I was young I took you like wine,
Held you and kissed you and thought you divine —
Happy-Go-Lucky, the habit's still mine,
Out in the wind and the rain.

Oh, my old Heart, what a life we have led,
Out in the wind and the rain!
How we have drunken and how we have fed!
Nothing to lose or to gain! —
Cover the fire now; get we to bed.
Long was the journey and far has it led:
Come, let us sleep, lass, sleep like the dead,
Out in the wind and the rain.

THE TROUBADOUR OF TREBIZEND

Night, they say, is no man's friend:
And at night he met his end
In the woods of Trebizend.

Hate crouched near him as he strode
Through the blackness of the road,
Where my Lord seemed some huge toad.

Eyes of murder glared and burned
At each bend of road he turned,
And where wild the torrent churned.

And with Death we stood and stared
From the bush as by he fared, —
But he never looked or cared.

He went singing; and a rose
Lay upon his heart's repose —
With what thought of her – who knows?

He had done no other wrong
Save to sing a simple song,
"I have loved you – loved you long."

And my lady smiled and sighed;
Gave a rose and looked moist eyed,
And forgot she was a bride.

My sweet lady, Jehan de Grace,
With the pale Madonna face,
He had brought to his embrace.

And my Lord saw: gave commands: