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Title: Love's Cynic
Author: Cale Young Rice [
More Titles by Rice]
I
O you poets, ever pretending
Love is immortal, pipe the truth!
Empty your books of lies, the ending
Of no passion can be--Youth.
"Heaven," you breathe, "will join the broken?"
Come, was the Infinite e'er wed,
That He must evermore be thinking
Of your wedding bed?
II
Pipe the truth! tho it clip the glamour
Out of your rhymes and rip your dream.
Do you believe words can enamour
Death and dry up Lethe's stream?
Death? it is but a Sponge that passes,
One the Appeaseless e'er will squeeze
Back into Lethe's flood--whose lasting
Is eternities.
III
"False!" cry you, "and an unbeseeming
Blasphemy!"--Well, look around.
Is it not only in blaspheming
Truth is ever to be found?
Whether it be, one thing I ask you,
Lovers and poets, tell, I pray,
Was there ever a love-oath ended
Ere the Judgment Day?
IV
"O," you answer, "ill is in all things."
But in an ancient lie what's good?
Is it not better just to call things
What they are--not what we would?
When you are clinging to your mistress,
Love has the face of Eternity.
Cling to her then, but know that Wanting
Fools the best that be.
V
"Yet her brows and her eyes that murmur
All the music," you say, "of God!"
Press her lips but a little firmer--
You will feel that they are--sod.
"But there is living soul beyond them,
And it is love's till all things end?"
Children alone build Paradises
With but pence to spend.
VI
"Ai-ho now! that is like the cynic,"
Pitying runs your poet-smile,
"He has sat at the Devil's clinic
With some dead love up the while."
Dead or alive are one with passions,
Under the potent knife of Truth
They will be seen composed of craving--
And a little ruth.
VII
"Then the world on a lie is living?"
Many a lie has filled its maw!
"Better illusion tho than giving
Faith to a fatal loveless Law?"
There is a certain Socratean
Saying that swine of their ditch are sure;
Yet do they prove by their contentment
That it will endure?
VIII
Clasp her close! But the truth is in you,
Tho you have rhymed and rammed it down,
Hid it with honey-words that win you
Wreaths that you know bedeck the clown.
Kings they will call you and uplifters
Of your kind? Lord save the mark,
That we are still for fire dependent
On so false a spark.
IX
And so fond! for you hold immortal
What has been born a day or two!
"But it was destined?" Ay, your portal
Only has God to heed--and you!
He with his thrice three million thirsting
Worlds in the throes of death and life
Surely has time to spare for choosing
Your behooven wife!
X
By my faith, there is not a creature
Mad as a poet, pants the breeze!
Give him a mistress and he'll preach her
As creation's Masterpiece.
Let him but lean for half an hour
Over her lips and he will swear
That he would dive thro death unfathomed
To regain her there.
XI
And believe that his oath is able!
That there is not in all the sea
Water enough to quench the fable
Of his soul's intensity.
Yet there was never a rose that blossomed
And endured beyond its day.
There was never a fire enkindled
But the great Cold had its way.
XII
"Pessimist," is your mortal answer,
"Wait till the love-wind pierces you!"
Wait? I have been the veriest dancer
To it, and, dupe still, would do
Truth to the death--shall I confess it?--
For but a moment on one breast.
Wherefore I add--and Adam bless it!--
Who loves once is like the rest.
[The end]
Cale Young Rice's poem: Love's Cynic
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