Dreams & Dust/The Tavern of Despair

THE wraiths of murdered hopes and loves Come whispering at the door, Come creeping through the weeping mist That drapes the barren moor; But we within have turned the key 'Gainst Hope and Love and Care, Where Wit keeps tryst with Folly, at The Tavern of Despair.

And we have come by divers ways To keep this merry tryst, But few of us have kept within The Narrow Way, I wist; For we are those whose ampler wits And hearts have proved our curse-- Foredoomed to ken the better things And aye to do the worse!

Long since we learned to mock ourselves; And from self-mockery fell

To heedless laughter in the face Of Heaven, Earth, and Hell. We quiver 'neath, and mock, God's rod; We feel, and mock, His wrath; We mock our own blood on the thorns That rim the "Primrose Path."

We mock the eerie glimmering shapes That range the outer wold, We mock our own cold hearts because They are so dead and cold; We flout the things we might have been Had self to self proved true, We mock the roses flung away, We mock the garnered rue;

The fates that gibe have lessoned us; There sups to-night on earth No madder crew of wastrels than This fellowship of mirth. . . . (Of mirth . . . drink, fools!--nor let it flag Lest from the outer mist Creep in that other company Unbidden to the tryst.

We're grown so fond of paradox Perverseness holds us thrall, So what each jester loves the best He mocks the most of all; But as the jest and laugh go round, Each in his neighbor's eyes Reads, while he flouts his heart's desire, The knowledge that he lies.

Not one of us but had some pearls And flung them to the swine, Not one of us but had some gift-- Some spark of fire divine-- Each might have been God's minister In the temple of some art-- Each feels his gift perverted move Wormlike through his dry heart.

If God called Azrael to Him now And bade Death bend the bow Against the saddest heart that beats Here on this earth below, Not any sobbing breast would gain The guerdon of that barb--

The saddest ones are those that wear The jester's motley garb.

Whose shout aye loudest rings, and whose The maddest cranks and quips-- Who mints his soul to laughter's coin And wastes it with his lips-- Has grown too sad for sighs and seeks To cheat himself with mirth; We fools self-doomed to motley are The weariest wights on earth!

But yet, for us whose brains and hearts Strove aye in paths perverse, Doomed still to know the better things And still to do the worse,-- What else is there remains for us But make a jest of care And set the rafters ringing, in Our Tavern of Despair?