Stops Of Various Quills - William Dean Howells

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me.

      Though I move with leaden feet,

      Light itself is not so fleet;

      And before you know me gone

      Eternity and I are one.

      FROM GENERATION TO GENERATION

      I

      INNOCENT spirits, bright, immaculate ghosts!

      Why throng your heavenly hosts,

      As eager for their birth

      In this sad home of death, this sorrow-haunted earth?

      Beware! Beware! Content you where you are,

      And shun this evil star,

      Where we who are doomed to die,

      Have our brief being and pass, we know not where or why.

      II

      We have not to consent or to refuse;

      It is not ours to choose:

      We come because we must,

      We know not by what law, if unjust or if just.

      The doom is on us, as it is on you,

      That nothing can undo ;

      And all in vain you warn:

      As your fate is to die, our fate is to be born.

      THE BEWILDERED GUEST

      WAS not asked if I should like to come.

      I have not seen my host here since I came,

      Or had a word of welcome in his name.

      Some say that we shall never see him, and some

      That we shall see him elsewhere, and then know

      Why we were bid. How long I am to stay

      I have not the least notion. None, they say,

      Was ever told when he should come or go.

      But every now and then there bursts upon

      The song and mirth a lamentable noise,

      A sound of shrieks and sobs, that strikes our joys

      Dumb in our breasts; and then, someone is gone.

      They say we meet him. None knows where or when.

      We know we shall not meet him here again.

      COMPANY

      THOUGHT," How terrible, if I were seen

      Just as in will and deed I had always been!

      And if this were the fate that I must face

      At the last day, and all else were God's grace,

      How must I shrink and cower before them there,

      Stripped naked to the soul and beggared bare

      Of every rag of seeming!" Then," Why, no,"

      I thought," Why should I, if the rest are so?"

      HEREDITY

      THAT swollen paunch you are doomed to bear

      Your gluttonous grandsire used to wear;

      That tongue, at once so light and dull,

      Wagged in your grandam's empty skull;

      That leering of the sensual eye

      Your father, when he came to die,

      Left yours alone; and that cheap flirt,

      Your mother, gave you from the dirt

      The simper which she used upon

      So many men ere he was won.

      Your vanity and greed and lust

      Are each your portion from the dust

      Of those that died, and from the tomb

      Made you what you must needs become.

      I do not hold you aught to blame

      For sin at second hand, and shame;

      Evil could but from evil spring;

      And yet, away, you charnel thing!

      TWELVE P.M.

      O get home from some scene of gayety,

      Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

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