English

Come knock your heads against this stone
For sorrow that poor John Thompson's gone.

It's an owercome sooth for age an' youth
And it brooks wi' nae denial,
That the dearest friends are the auldest friends,
And the young are just on trial.

There's a rival bauld wi' young an' auld
And it's him that has bereft me;
For the sürest friends are the auldest friends
And the maist o' mine's hae left me.

There are kind hearts still, for friends to fill
And fools to take and break them;
But the nearest friends are the auldest friends
And the grave's the place to seek them.

If neither brass nor marble can withstand
The mortal force of Time's destructive hand;
If mountains sink to vales, if cities die,
And lessening rivers mourn their fountains dry,
"When my old cassock,' says a Welsh divine,
"Is out at elbows, why should I repine?'

Though Shakespeare's Mermaid, ocean's mightiest daughter,
With vintage could the seas incarnadine:
And Keats's name that was not writ in water
Was often writ in wine.

Though wine that seeks the loftiest habitation
Went to the heads of Villon and Verlaine,
Yet Hiram Hopper needs no inspiration
But water on the brain.

Our souls shall be Leviathans
In purple seas of wine
When drunkenness is dead with death,
And drink is all divine;
Learning in those immortal vats
What mortal vineyards mean;
For only in heaven we shall know
How happy we have been.

Like clouds that wallow in the wind
Be free to drift and drink;
Tower without insolence when we rise,
Without surrender sink:
Dreams dizzy and crazy we shall know
And have no need to write
Our blameless blasphemies of praise,
Our nightmares of delight.

We will not let thee be, for thou art ours.
We thank thee still, though thou forget these things,
For that hour's sake when thou didst wake all powers
With a great cry that God was sick of kings.

Leave thee there grovelling at their rusted greaves,
These hulking cowards on a painted stage,
Who, with imperial pomp and laurel leaves,
Show their Marengo—one man in a cage.

These, for whom stands no type or title given
In all the squalid tales of gore and pelf;
Though cowed by crashing thunders from all heaven,

Name the thing knowledge—name it liberty—
To me this laughter and light sundering seems
Dark with the dismal anarchy of dreams
Where everything is false and therefore free:
The ringing bird-bolt shot with certainty
Shrieks past exultant as a sea-bird screams;
The thistledown, on every air that streams,
Floats ever in a sad frivolity.

You too that toy with treacheries, you too,
You (if the perfect one should come in power),
Having the terrible human heart within,
The trumpet of the valorous voice in you,

The walls and the dome of the evening
Are walls and a dome as of fire
The grasses are gold and the roses
Dark red as low fires on the brier,
Stir deep, as dim banners and broidered
Bronze forests below and above,
A day dieth happy and kingly,
And two have known love.

Flame, walls of the world as a temple
Gleam fenland and field as a floor
For two have made way through a woodland
And two have ta'en hands at a door
The fields give them fierier petals
The woodlands deep shadows and strong

In the ancient Christian ages, while a dreamy faith and wonder
Lingered, like the mystic glamour of the star of Bethlehem,
Dwelt a monk that loved the sea-birds as they wheeled about his chapel,
Loved the dog-rose and the heath-flower as they brushed his garment hem;

Did not claim a ruthless knowledge of the bounds of grace eternal,
Did not say, “Thus far, not further, God has set the hopes of life.”
Only knew that heaven had sent him weaker lives in earth's communion,
Bade him dwell and work amongst them, not in anger nor in strife.

I thank thee, O Lord, for the stones in the street
I thank thee for the hay-carts yonder and for the houses built and half-built
That fly past me as I stride.
But most of all for the great wind in my nostrils
As if thine own nostrils were close.