Ah, love, 'tis a sorrowful land!

The beauty that men seek is half a dream--

Where'er we wander, yet it lies afar;

It touches with its wand a setting star,

It stirs the ripple of an ebbing stream.

And though we run beyond the dawning gleam,

Or kneel to worship at an altar bright,

We may not know the soul of its delight,

Or more than marvel at its palest beam.

I too was young once--or I think so--see,

How the years slip like coins from open hands!

Give me to die like a beast, afar, alone

With but the hawk and crow

To watch beside me while I cast my soul,

And but the sky to know

What my racked lips have uttered, what last groan,

Or curse or prayer, I breathed to heaven above.

And should men name me dead, I beg ye, say

"Nay, he but wearied here, and went away."

I think we are what Time may make us--lords

Of wealth and land, or wagemen held at hire;

Turning the years, we gain our toil's desire,

Or lose, inopportune, its high rewards.

Oh, the morrow of pain and dole

Is naught while the sunlight lingers.

Yet earth has never child she may not slay,

Nor sea a lover that she cannot kill.

God is a creed outworn,

Ill-wrought from a mirage fair,

And life is an image pale

That faces a sunless morn.

Let me leap naked through life's testing flame,

And bear to lose, and yet endure to win.

Ye are but actors moved at Time's behest,

And king or slave as shifts the pantomime.