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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

EPILOGUE by EDMUND WILLIAM GOSSE

First Line: BEFORE MY TALE OF DAYS IS TOLD
Last Line: AND, THOUGH IT SLAY ME, WELCOME IT.
BEFORE my tale of days is told,
O may I watch, on reverent knees,
The Unknown Beauty once unfold
The magic of her mysteries!

Before I die, O may I see,
Clasp'd in her violet girdle, Spring;
May April breezes blow to me
Songs that the youngest poets sing!

Old eyes are dull to sights unseen,
Old ears are dull to songs unsung,
But if the heart stay warm and green,
Perchance the senses may keep young.

Howe'er it be, I will not quail
To tell the lapse of years like sand;
My faith in beauty shall not fail
Because I fail to understand.

New arts, new raptures, new desires
Will stir the new-born souls of men;
New fingers smite new-fashioned lyres, --
And O! may I be listening then.

The centaur crashes thro' the wood,
And shoots his arrow there and thus:
Shall I prefer my solitude
Because his form be fabulous?

Shall I reject the green and rose
Of opals, with their shifting flame,
Because the classic diamond glows
With lustre that is still the same?

Change is the pulse of life on earth;
The artist dies, but Art lives on;
New rhapsodies are ripe for birth
When every rhapsodist seems gone.

So, if I pray for length of days,
It is not in the barren pride
That looks behind itself, and says,
"The Past alone is deified!"

Nay, humbly, shrinkingly, in dread
Of fires too splendid to be borne, --
In expectation lest my head
Be from its Orphic shoulders torn, --

I wait, till, down the eastern sky
Muses, like Maenads in a throng,
Sweep my decayed traditions by,
In startling tones of unknown song.

So, to my days' extremity,
May I, in patience infinite,
Attend the beauty that must be,
And, though it slay me, welcome it.


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