Short Poems

A Thought Of Seneca


Death! I have no cause to fear you!
Safe my path through life I tread;
If I'm Here, then I'm not near you,
If you are here, then I am dead.

I live only here, between your eyes and you,
But I live in your world. What do I do?
--Collect no interest--otherwise what I can;
Above all I am not that staring man.

Prate not to me so much of suns and of nebulous bodies;
Think ye Nature but great, in that she gives thee to count?
Though your object may be the sublimest that space holds within it,
Yet, my good friends, the sublime dwells not in the regions of space.

BECAUSE I show a guarded face
To all the world but one or two,
And in my heart's most secret place
Consider lilies, why should you
Whose roses grow in common ground
Profane the cloister I have found?

You make me think of many men
Once met, to be forgot again
Or merely resurrected
In a parenthesis of wit
That found them hastening through it
Too brisk to be inspected.

Affronting fool, subdue your transient light;
When Wisdom's dull dares Folly to be bright:
If Genius stumble in the path to fame,
'Tis decency in dunces to go lame.

Brighter than fireflies upon the Uji River
Are your words in the dark, Beloved.

Dear critic, who my lightness so deplores,
Would I might study to be prince of bores,
Right wisely would I rule that dull estate--
But, sir, I may not, till you abdicate.

I wish thy lot, now bad, still worse, my friend;
For when at worst, they say, things always mend.

So many gods, so many creeds,
So many paths that wind and wind,
While just the art of being kind,
Is all the sad world needs.