Vale-lily and periwinkle; Wet stone-crop on the sill; The look of leaves a-twinkle With windlets clear and still; The feel of a forest rill That wimples fresh and fleet About one’s naked feet; The muzzles of drinking herds; Lush flags and bulrushes; The chirp of rain-bound birds— To live, I think of these! _Envoy_ Dark aisles, new packs of cards, Mermaidens’ tails, cool swards, Dawn dews and starlit seas, White marbles, whiter words— To live, I think of these! BALLADE OF TRUISMS GOLD or silver, every day, Dies to gray. There are knots in every skein. Hours of work and hours of play Fade away Into one immense Inane. Shadow and substance, chaff and grain, Are as vain As the foam or as the spray. Life goes crooning, faint and fain, One refrain: ‘If it could be always May!’ Though the earth be green and gay, Though, they say, Man the cup of heaven may drain; Though, his little world to sway, He display Hoard on hoard of pith and brain: Autumn brings a mist and rain That constrain Him and his to know decay, Where undimmed the lights that wane Would remain, If it could be always May. _Yea_, alas, must turn to _Nay_, Flesh to clay. Chance and Time are ever twain. Men may scoff, and men may pray, But they pay Every pleasure with a pain. Life may soar, and Fortune deign To explain Where her prizes hide and stay; But we lack the lusty train We should gain, If it could be always May. _Envoy_ Time, the pedagogue, his cane Might retain, But his charges all would stray Truanting in every lane— Jack with Jane— If it could be always May. DOUBLE BALLADE OF LIFE AND FATE FOOLS may pine, and sots may swill, Cynics gibe, and prophets rail, Moralists may scourge and drill, Preachers prose, and fainthearts quail. Let them whine, or threat, or wail! Till the touch of Circumstance Down to darkness sink the scale, Fate’s a fiddler, Life’s a dance. What if skies be wan and chill? What if winds be harsh and stale? Presently the east will thrill, And the sad and shrunken sail, Bellying with a kindly gale, Bear you sunwards, while your chance Sends you back the hopeful hail:— ‘Fate’s a fiddler, Life’s a dance.’ Idle shot or coming bill, Hapless love or broken bail, Gulp it (never chew your pill!), And, if Burgundy should fail, Try the humbler pot of ale! Over all is heaven’s expanse. Gold’s to find among the shale. Fate’s a fiddler, Life’s a dance.