Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/446

VARIOUS POEMS One stumbles when the lights are dim,—

'T is growing late: we must be gone.

Well, braver luck than mine, old friends!

A little work and fame are ours

While Heaven health and fortune lends,

And then—the coffin and the flowers!

These scattered garments? let them lie:

Some fresher actor (I'm not vain)

Will dress anew the part;—but I—

I shall not put them on again.

LE JOUR DU ROSSIGNOL

the season of feasts, when the blithe birds had met

In their easternmost arbor, an innocent throng,

And they made the glad birthday of each gladder yet,

With the daintiest cheer and the rarest of song.

What brave tirra-lirras! But clear amid all,

At each festival held in the favorite haunt,

The nightingale's music would quaver and fall,

And surest and sweetest of all was his chant.

At last came the nightingale's fête, and they sought

To make it the blithefullest tryst of the year,

Since this was the songster that oftenest caught

The moment's quick rapture, the joy that is near.

But, alas! half in vain the fine chorus they made;

Fresh-plumed and all fluttering, and uttering their best,

For silent among them, so etiquette bade,

To the notes of his praisers sat listening the guest.

Quel dommage! Must a failure, like theirs, be our feast?

Must our chorister's voice at his own fête be still? 416