So back I go to my job again, Not so easy to rob again, Or quite so ready to sob again On any neck that's around. I'm leaving, Pater. Good-bye to you! God bless you, Mater! I'll write to you.... I wouldn't be impolite to you, But, Brother, you _are_ a hound!
I know not in Whose hands are laid To empty upon earth From unsuspected ambuscade The very Urns of Mirth;
Who bids the Heavenly Lark arise And cheer our solemn round-- The Jest beheld with streaming eyes And grovellings on the ground;
Who joins the flats of Time and Chance Behind the prey preferred, And thrones on Shrieking Circumstance The Sacredly Absurd,
Till Laughter, voiceless through excess, Waves mute appeal and sore, Above the midriff's deep distress, For breath to laugh once more.
No creed hath dared to hail Him Lord, No raptured choirs proclaim, And Nature's strenuous Overword Hath nowhere breathed His Name.
Yet, it must be, on wayside jape, The selfsame Power bestows The selfsame power as went to shape His Planet or His Rose.
There are three degrees of bliss At the foot of Allah's Throne, And the highest place is his Who saves a brother's soul At peril of his own. There is the Power made known!
There are three degrees of bliss In the Gardens of Paradise, And the second place is his Who saves his brother's soul By excellent advice. For there the Glory lies!
There are three degrees of bliss And three abodes of the Blest, And the lowest place is his Who has saved a soul by a jest And a brother's soul in sport ... But there do the Angels resort!
Where's the lamp that Hero lit Once to call Leander home? Equal Time hath shovelled it 'Neath the wrack of Greece and Rome. Neither wait we any more That worn sail which Argo bore.
Dust and dust of ashes close All the Vestal Virgins' care; And the oldest altar shows But an older darkness there. Age-encamped Oblivion Tenteth every light that shone!
Yet shall we, for Suns that die, Wall our wanderings from desire? Or, because the Moon is high. Scorn to use a nearer fire? Lest some envious Pharaoh stir, Make our lives our sepulchre?
Nay! Though Time with petty Fate Prison us and Emperors, By our Arts do we create That which Time himself devours-- Such machines as well may run 'Gainst the horses of the Sun.