Misfortune
AWAY with the muses of frolic!—away
With the haunts of diversion and folly!—and mine—
Ay, mine be the joy to awaken a lay,
And to weave for misfortune a garland divine.
We shrink at life’s shadows and fly to the bowl,
Tho’ warned and reminded again and again
That the death of the reason’s the death of the soul,
And what seemeth a loss may in fact be a gain.
Full often to us is the loss or the cross
What the furnace itself’s to the nugget of ore;
And the more we are freed from mortality’s dross,
The brighter the soul and her glory the more.
The saint is the grander when smitten by woe—
The sinner excites a sweet thrill in our breast;
And still from the presence of sorrow shall flow
What endeareth the spirit by sorrow possesst.
Cleopatra of old threw o’er Caesar a spell,
And her life was a chain of such triumphs and yet
To the soul her real glory began when she fell,
And her blood as a meal to the viper was set.
Not only the victims of virtue we mourn,
But the victims of error our pity enthral;
And the tear we let fall o’er a Lucretia’s urn,
Leaves a tear o’er the urn of a Helen to fall.
Not alone round the brows of the martyrs of right,
But a halo encircles the victims of wrong;
And if history’s muse in a Hampden delight,
Not less is a Stuart the idol of song.
Endeared thro’ affliction, thro’ anguish endeared,
By pity to many a vigil is kept
Who else, with the idols by fashion revered,
Unmourned in the waters of Lethe had slept.
The mortal immortal becomes upon earth,
And the spirit thro’ trials is helped to the goal,
Where the mantle of glory and girdle of worth,
Are the meed that awaiteth the tender in soul.
Be our state e’er so lofty, down we must sink,
When the dire wheel of fortune moves on, as it may,
But the greater the blow sooner broken the link
By which we are bound to what smacks of the clay.
Then give me the gift to awaken a lay,
And to weave for misfortune a garland divine;
And the world and its follies may go on their way—
A rapture unknown to the giddy is mine.
Other works by Joseph Skipsey...
