The Poet’s Last Word

On being asked why he forsook the composition of poetry,

and ceaselessly importuned to take up the practice again.

Cease! here a dry-tongued, weeping child sucks his dead mother’s empty breast;
Here a soot-blackened street-waif labors, hollow-eyed for want of rest;

Here an unwanted, unloved beggar clutches his rags against the cold:
See! his empty eyes roll upward, there where myriad worlds have rolled –

Can hollowness grow hollow? well might his, if he would learn
That those worlds of silv’ry promise all roll onward but to burn.

Hope is a cheat in a world of cheats; I will see this cheat Hope dead –
As empty as all those mocked by her – ere the laurel comes back on my head.

Cease! shall I sing you a happy song? it is a mockery:
If I sing, let it be the way things are – not the way they ought to be.

What shall I sing you? a pretty girl? eyes bright, cheeks rosy, lips full –
How fair! but alas, it is but a flesh-mask, stretched on a death’s-head skull.

So would it be if I sang to please you, sang you a happy song –
Ask me not (Friend!) with my rosy words to paint this death-world wrong,

Or ask if you will – this poet is dead; these lips the world’s breast has left dry:
En Cristo [i] is all my un-poet-like plea, sola gratia [ii] my last fainting cry.

[i] Greek: “In Christ” [ii] Latin: “grace alone”

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