________________________________________________
Title: Dialogue
Author: John Collings Squire [
More Titles by Squire]
THE ONE
The dead man's gone, the live man's
sad, the dying leaf shakes on the tree,
The wind constrains the window panes and
moans like moaning of the sea,
And sour's the taste now culled in haste of
lovely things I won too late,
And loud and loud above the crowd the
Voice of One more strong than we.
THE OTHER
This Voice you hear, this call you fear, is
it unprophesied or new?
Were you so insolent to think its rope would
never circle you?
Did you then beastlike live and walk with
ears and eyes that would not turn?
Who bade you hope your service 'scape in
that eternal retinue?
THE ONE
No; for I swear now bare's the tree and loud
the moaning of the wind,
I walked no rut with eyelids shut, my ears
and eyes were never blind,
Only my eager thoughts I bent on many
things that I desired
To make my greedy heart content ere flesh
and blood I left behind.
THE OTHER
Ignorance, then, was all your fault and
filmèd eyes that could not know,
That half discerned and never learned the
temporal way that men must go;
You set the image of the world high for
your heart's idolatry,
Though with your lips you called the world
a toy, a ghost, a passing show.
THE ONE
No, no; this is not true; my lips spoke
only what my heart believed.
Called I the world a toy; I spoke not echo-like
or self-deceived.
But that I thought the toy was mine to play
with, and the passing show
Would sate at least my passing lusts, and did
not, therefore am I grieved.
What did I do that I must bear this lifelong
tyranny of my fate,
That I must writhe in bonds unsought of
accidental love and hate?
Had chance but joinèd different dice, but
once or twice, but once or twice,
All lovely things that I desired I should have
held before too late.
Surely I knew that flesh was grass nor valued
overmuch the prize,
But all the powers of chance conspired to
cheat a man both just and wise.
Happy I'd been had I but had my due
reward, and not a sword
Flaming in diabolic hand between me and
my Paradise.
THE OTHER
No hooded band of fates did stand your
heart's ambitions to gainsay,
No flaming brand in evil hand was ever
thrust across your way,
Only the things all men must meet, the
common attributes of men,
That men may flinch to see or, seeing, deny,
but avoid them no man may.
Fall the dice, not once or twice but always, to
make the self-same sum;
Chance what may, a life's a life and to a
single goal must come;
Though a man search far and wide, never
is hunger satisfied;
Nature brings her natural fetters, man is
meshed and the wise are dumb.
O vain all art to assuage a heart with accents
of a mortal tongue,
All earthly words are incomplete and only
sweet are the songs unsung,
Never yet was cause for regret, yet regret
must afflict us all,
Better it were to grasp the world 'thwart
which this world is a curtain flung.
[The end]
John Collings Squire's poem: Dialogue
________________________________________________
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
