Page:Anthology of Magazine Verse (1921).djvu/213
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
THE SORROWFUL MASQUERADE
Even as to a music, stately and sad,
The young girls' feet begin to move in a dance,
And curiously for joy shift and advance;
So to a mournful waltz, sombre and sweet;
All laughing things move with delighted feet,
So all things that draw light and laughing breath
Move to the mournful waltz of life and death.
Comedy is a girl dancing in time
To the tragic pipes, sorrowful and sublime;
And ever she laughs back, and as she skips
Mimics the mournful music with her lips;
Then for sheer anger at her own pretense
Sobs violently at her own vehemence,
And mocks her tears. But when the pipings sleep
She needs must cover up her face and weep.
The young girls' feet begin to move in a dance,
And curiously for joy shift and advance;
So to a mournful waltz, sombre and sweet;
All laughing things move with delighted feet,
So all things that draw light and laughing breath
Move to the mournful waltz of life and death.
Comedy is a girl dancing in time
To the tragic pipes, sorrowful and sublime;
And ever she laughs back, and as she skips
Mimics the mournful music with her lips;
Then for sheer anger at her own pretense
Sobs violently at her own vehemence,
And mocks her tears. But when the pipings sleep
She needs must cover up her face and weep.
Poetry, A Magazine of VerseJohn Hall Wheelock
PLAINT
Brief is Man's travail here and transitory
His wrath that soon is spent,
Brief his lament,
Lifted in vain against the harsh decrees
Of the high Destinies
That move not to the measure of his woe:
Even as snow
On sunny meadows, as a lover's story
Told in an April twilight long ago,
Brief is he even as these—
His little hour of tumult, or of glory—
And to what end devised we may not guess,
Considering, as we go
His wrath that soon is spent,
Brief his lament,
Lifted in vain against the harsh decrees
Of the high Destinies
That move not to the measure of his woe:
Even as snow
On sunny meadows, as a lover's story
Told in an April twilight long ago,
Brief is he even as these—
His little hour of tumult, or of glory—
And to what end devised we may not guess,
Considering, as we go
198