TO _Garryowen_ upon an organ ground Two girls are jigging. Riotously they trip, With eyes aflame, quick bosoms, hand on hip, As in the tumult of a witches’ round. Youngsters and youngsters round them prance and bound. Two solemn babes twirl ponderously, and skip. The artist’s teeth gleam from his bearded lip. High from the kennel howls a tortured hound. The music reels and hurtles, and the night Is full of stinks and cries; a naphtha-light Flares from a barrow; battered and obtused With vices, wrinkles, life and work and rags, Each with her inch of clay, two loitering hags Look on dispassionate—critical—something ’mused. THE GODS ARE DEAD THE gods are dead? Perhaps they are! Who knows? Living at least in Lemprière undeleted, The wise, the fair, the awful, the jocose, Are one and all, I like to think, retreated In some still land of lilacs and the rose. Once higeh they sat, and high o’er earthly shows With sacrificial dance and song were greeted. Once . . . long ago. But now, the story goes, The gods are dead. It must be true. The world, a world of prose, Full-crammed with facts, in science swathed and sheeted, Nods in a stertorous after-dinner doze! Plangent and sad, in every wind that blows Who will may hear the sorry words repeated:— ‘The Gods are Dead!’ _To_ F. W. LET us be drunk, and for a while forget, Forget, and, ceasing even from regret, Live without reason and despite of rhyme, As in a dream preposterous and sublime, Where place and hour and means for once are met. Where is the use of effort? Love and debt And disappointment have us in a net. Let us break out, and taste the morning prime . . . Let us be drunk. In vain our little hour we strut and fret, And mouth our wretched parts as for a bet: We cannot please the tragicaster Time. To gain the crystal sphere, the silver dime, Where Sympathy sits dimpling on us yet, Let us be drunk! WHEN YOU ARE OLD WHEN you are old, and I am passed away— Passed, and your face, your golden face, is gray— I think, whate’er the end, this dream of mine, Comforting you, a friendly star will shine Down the dim slope where still you stumble and stray. So may it be: that so dead Yesterday, No sad-eyed ghost but generous and gay, May serve you memories like almighty wine, When you are old! Dear Heart, it shall be so. Under the sway Of death the past’s enormous disarray Lies hushed and dark. Yet though there come no sign, Live on well pleased: immortal and divine Love shall still tend you, as God’s angels may, When you are old. BESIDE THE IDLE SUMMER SEA BESIDE the idle summer sea And in the vacant summer days, Light Love came fluting down the ways, Where you were loitering with me.