FALSE dreams, all false, mad heart, were yours, The word, and nought else, in time endures. Not you long after, perished and mute, will last, but the defter viol and lute, Sweetly they'll trouble the listeners with the cold dropped pebble of painless verse. Not you will be offered, but the poet's false pain. Mad heart, you have suffered, and loved in vain. What joy doth Helen or Paris have Where these lie still in a nameless grave? Her beauty's a wraith, and the boy Paris muffles in death his mouth's cold cherries. Aye! these are less, that were love's summer, than one gold phrase of old blind Homer? Not Helen's wonder nor Paris stirs, but the bright untender hexameters. And thus, all passion is nothing made, but a star to flash in an Iliad. Mad heart, you were wrong! No love of yours, but only what is sung, when love's over, endures. |