p. 15Man is a flagon, and his soul the wine, Man is a lamp, wherein the Soul doth shine, Man is a shaken reed, wherein that wind, The Soul, doth ever rustle and repine.

p. 15

Each morn I say, to-night I will repent, Repent! and each night go the way I went—  The way of Wine; but now that reigns the rose, Lord of Repentance, rage not, but relent.

I wish to drink of wine—so deep, so deep— The scent of wine my sepulchre shall steep, And they, the revellers by Omar’s tomb, Shall breathe it, and in Wine shall fall asleep.

Before the rent walls of a ruined town Lay the King’s skull, whereby a bird flew down  ‘And where,’ he sang, ‘is all thy clash of arms? Where the sonorous trumps of thy renown?’

p. 16ÆSOP

p. 16

He sat among the woods, he heard The sylvan merriment: he saw The pranks of butterfly and bird, The humours of the ape, the daw.

He

And in the lion or the frog—  In all the life of moor and fen, In ass and peacock, stork and dog, He read similitudes of men.

‘Of these, from those,’ he cried, ‘we come, Our hearts, our brains descend from these.’ And lo! the Beasts no more were dumb, But answered out of brakes and trees:

‘Not ours,’ they cried; ‘Degenerate, If ours at all,’ they cried again, p. 17‘Ye fools, who war with God and Fate, Who strive and toil: strange race of men.

p. 17

‘For we are neither bond nor free, For we have neither slaves nor kings, But near to Nature’s heart are we, And conscious of her secret things.

‘Content are we to fall asleep, And well content to wake no more, We do not laugh, we do not weep, Nor look behind us and before;

‘But were there cause for moan or mirth,  ’Tis we, not you, should sigh or scorn, Oh, latest children of the Earth, Most childish children Earth has borne.’

* * *

They spoke, but that misshapen slave Told never of the thing he heard, And unto men their portraits gave, In 

 Prev. P 15/43 next