And would you know who his hearers must be? I tell you just what my guide told me: Excellent teaching men have, day and night, From two earnest friars, a black and a white, The Dominican Death and the Carmelite Life; And between these two there is never strife, For each has his separate office and station, And each his own work in the congregation; Whoso to the white brother deafens his ears, And cannot be wrought on by blessings or tears, Awake in his coffin must wait and wait, In that blackness of darkness that means _too late_, And come once a year, when the ghost-bell tolls, As till Doomsday it shall on the eve of All-Souls, To hear Doctor Death, whose words smart with the brine Of the Preacher, the tenth verse of chapter nine. ARCADIA REDIVIVA. I, walking the familiar street, While a crammed horse-car jingled through it, Was lifted from my prosy feet And in Arcadia ere I knew it. Fresh sward for gravel soothed my tread, And shepherd’s pipes my ear delighted; The riddle may be lightly read: I met two lovers newly plighted. They murmured by in happy care, New plans for paradise devising, Just as the moon, with pensive stare, O’er Mistress Craigie’s pines was rising. Astarte, known nigh threescore years, Me to no speechless rapture urges; Them in Elysium she enspheres, Queen, from of old, of thaumaturges. The railings put forth bud and bloom, The house-fronts all with myrtles twine them, And light-winged Loves in every room Make nests, and then with kisses line them. O sweetness of untasted life! O dream, its own supreme fulfilment! O hours with all illusion rife, As ere the heart divined what ill meant! “_Et ego_,” sighed I to myself, And strove some vain regrets to bridle, “Though now laid dusty on the shelf, Was hero once of such an idyl! “An idyl ever newly sweet, Although since Adam’s day recited, Whose measures time them to Love’s feet, Whose sense is every ill requited.” Maiden, if I may counsel, drain Each drop of this enchanted season, For even our honeymoons must wane, Convicted of green cheese by Reason. And none will seem so safe from change, Nor in such skies benignant hover, As this, beneath whose witchery strange You tread on rose-leaves with your lover. The glass unfilled all tastes can fit, As round its brim Conjecture dances; For not Mephisto’s self hath wit To draw such vintages as Fancy’s. When our pulse beats its minor key, When play-time halves and school-time doubles, Age fills the cup with serious tea, Which once Dame Clicquot starred with bubbles. “Fie, Mr. Graybeard! Is this wise? Is this the moral of a poet, Who, when the plant of Eden dies, Is privileged once more to sow it? “That herb of clay-disdaining root, From stars secreting what it feeds on, Is burnt-out passion’s slag and soot Fit soil to strew its dainty seeds on?