The Cup of Comus: Fact and Fancy

If she followed to the tree. —
Then recalled how long since she
Had been mold.

THE CLOSED DOOR

Shut it out of the heart – this grief,
O Love, with the years grown old and hoary!
And let in joy that life is brief,
And give God thanks for the end of the story.
The bond of the flesh is transitory,
And beauty goes with the lapse of years —
The brow's white rose and the hair's dark glory —
God be thanked for the severing shears!

Over the past, Heart, waste no tears!
Over the past, and all its madness,
Its wine and wormwood, hopes and fears,
That never were worth a moment's sadness.
Here she lies who was part o' its gladness,
Wife and mistress, and shared its woe,
The good of life as well as its badness, —
Look on her face and see if you know.

Is this the face? – yea, ask it slow! —
The hair, the form, that we used to cherish? —
Where is the glory of long-ago?
The beauty we said would never perish. —
Like a dream we dream, or a thought we nourish,
Nothing of earth immortal is:
This is the end however we flourish —
All that is fair must come to this.

THE LONG ROOM

He found the long room as it was of old,
Glimmering with sunset's gold;
That made the tapestries seem full of eyes
Strange with a wild surmise:
Glaring upon a Psyche where she shone
Carven of stainless stone,
Holding a crystal heart where many a sun
Seemed starrily bound in one:
And near her, grim in rigid metal, stood
An old knight in a wood,
Groping his way: the bony wreck, that was
His steed, at weary pause.
And over these a canvas – one mad mesh
Of Chrysoprase tints of flesh
And breasts – Bohemian cups, whose glory gleamed
For one who, brutish, seemed
A hideous Troll, unto whose lustful arms
She yielded glad her charms.

Then he remembered all her shame; and knew
The thing that he must do:
These were but records of his life: the whole
Portrayed to him his soul. —
So, drawing forth the slim Bithynian phial,
He drained it with a smile.
And 'twixt the Knight and Psyche fell and died;
The arras, evil-eyed,
Glared grimly at him where all night he lay,
And where a stealthy ray
Pointed her to him– her, that nymph above,
Who gave the Troll her love.

IN PEARL AND GOLD

When pearl and gold, o'er deeps of musk,
The moon curves, silvering the dusk, —
As in a garden, dreaming,
A lily slips its dewy husk
A firefly in its gleaming, —
I of my garden am a guest;
My garden, that, in beauty dressed
Of simple shrubs and oldtime flowers,
Chats with me of the perished hours,
When she companioned me in life,
Living remote from care and strife.

It says to me: "How sad and slow
The hours of daylight come and go,
Until the Night walks here again
With moon and starlight in her train,
And she and I with perfumed words
Of winds and waters, dreaming birds,
And flowers and crickets and the moon,
For hour on hour, in soul commune. – "
And you, and you,
Sit here and listen in the dew
For her, the love, you used to know,
Who often walked here, long ago,
Long ago;
The young, sweet love you used to know
Long ago
Whom oft I watched with violet eye,
Or eye of dew, as she passed by:
As she passed by.