'Name and fame! to fly sublime

Thro' the courts, the camps, the schools, Is to be the ball of Time,

Bandied by the hands of fools.

‘Friendship !—to be two in one-
Let the canting liar pack!
Well I know, when I am gone,
How she mouths behind my back.

'Virtue !-to be good and just-
Every heart, when sifted well,
Is a clot of warmer dust,

Mix'd with cunning sparks of hell.

'O! we two as well can look
Whited thought and cleanly life
As the priest, above his book
Leering at his neighbour's wife.

'Fill the cup, and fill the can:
Have a rouse before the morn :
Every moment dies a man,
Every moment one is born.

'Drink, and let the parties rave:
They are filled with idle spleen;
Rising, falling, like a wave,

For they know not what they mean

'He that roars for liberty

Faster binds a tyrant's power;

And the tyrant's cruel glee

Forces on the freer hour.

'Fill the can, and fill the cup:
All the windy ways of men
Are but dust that rises up,
And is lightly laid again.

'Greet her with applausive breath,
Freedom, gaily doth she tread;

In her right a civic wreath,

In her left a human head.

'No, I love not what is new;
She is of an ancient house :
And I think we know the hue
Of that cap upon her brows.

'Let her go! her thirst she slakes
Where the bloody conduit runs,
Then her sweetest meal she makes
On the first-born of her sons.

'Drink to lofty hopes that cool-
Visions of a perfect State :
Drink we, last, the public fool,
Frantic love and frantic hate.

'Chant me now some wicked stave,
Till thy drooping courage rise,
And the glow-worm of the grave
Glimmer in thy rheumy eyes.

'Fear not thou to loose thy tongue;
Set thy hoary fancies free;
What is loathsome to the young
Savours well to thee and me.

'Change, reverting to the years,

When thy nerves could understand

What there is in loving tears,

And the warmth of hand in hand.

'Tell me tales of thy first love-
April hopes, the fools of chance;
Till the graves begin to move,
And the dead begin to dance.

'Fill the can, and fill the cup:
All the windy ways of men
Are but dust that rises up,

And is lightly laid again.

'Trooping from their mouldy dens The chap-fallen circle spreads: Welcome, fellow-citizens,

Hollow hearts and empty heads!

'You are bones, and what of that?
Every face, however full,
Padded round with flesh and fat,
Is but modell'd on a skull.

'Death is king, and Vivat Rex !
Tread a measure on the stones,
Madam--if I know your sex,

From the fashion of your bones.

'No, I cannot praise the fire
In your eye-nor yet your lip :
All the more do I admire

Joints of cunning workmanship.

'Lo! God's likeness-the ground-plan-
Neither modell'd, glazed, nor framed :
Buss me, thou rough sketch of man,
Far too naked to be shamed!

'Drink to Fortune, drink to Chance,
While we keep a little breath!
Drink to heavy Ignorance!

Hob-and-nob with brother Death!

'Thou art mazed, the night is long,
And the longer night is near :
What! I am not all as wrong
As a bitter jest is dear.

'Youthful hopes, by scores, to all,
When the locks are crisp and curl'd;

Unto me my maudlin gall

And my mockeries of the world.

'Fill the cup, and fill the can:
Mingle madness, mingle scorn!
Dregs of life, and lees of man :
Yet we will not die forlorn.'

V

The voice grew faint: there came a further change: Once more uprose the mystic mountain-range :

Below were men and horses pierced with worms,
And slowly quickening into lower forms;

By shards and scurf of salt, and scum of dross,
Old plash of rains, and refuse patch'd with moss.
Then some one spake: Behold! it was a crime
Of sense avenged by sense that wore with time.'
Another said: "The crime of sense became
The crime of malice, and is equal blame.'
And one: 'He had not wholly quench'd his
power;

A little grain of conscience made him sour.'
At last I heard a voice upon the slope

Cry to the summit, 'Is there any hope?'
To which an answer peal'd from that high land,
But in a tongue no man could understand;
And on the glimmering limit far withdrawn
God made Himself an awful rose of dawn.

IX

THE TWO VOICES

A STILL Small voice spake unto me,
'Thou art so full of misery,

Were it not better not to be?'

Then to the still small voice I said
'Let me not cast in endless shade
What is so wonderfully made.'

To which the voice did urge reply;
'To-day I saw the dragon-fly

;

Come from the wells where he did lie.

'An inner impulse rent the veil

Of his old husk: from head to tail

Came out clear plates of sapphire mail.

'He dried his wings: like gauze they grew;
Thro' crofts and pastures wet with dew
A living flash of light he flew.'

I said, 'When first the world began,
Young Nature thro' five cycles ran,
And in the sixth she moulded man.

'She gave him mind, the lordliest Proportion, and, above the rest, Dominion in the head and breast.'

Thereto the silent voice replied; 'Self-blinded are you by your pride: Look up thro' night: the world is wide.

'This truth within thy mind rehearse, That in a boundless universe

Is boundless better, boundless worse.

'Think you this mould of hopes and fears
Could find no statelier than his peers
In yonder hundred million spheres ?`

It spake, moreover, in my mind:
'Tho' thou wert scatter'd to the wind,
Yet is there plenty of the kind.'

Then did my response clearer fall:
'No compound of this earthly ball
Is like another, all in all.'

To which he answer'd scoffingly;
'Good soul! suppose I grant it thee,
Who'll weep for thy deficiency?

'Or will one beam be less intense,
When thy peculiar difference

Is cancell'd in the world of sense?'

I would have said, 'Thou canst not know, But my full heart, that work'd below,

Rain'd thro' my sight its overflow.

Again the voice spake unto me: 'Thou art so steep'd in misery, Surely 'twere better not to be.