VI. MISCELLANEOUS POEMS

     
     
           LOST
     
           So you have gained the golden crowns, so you have piled together
       The laurels and the jewels, the pearls out of the blue,
     But I will beat the bounding drum and I will fly the feather
       For all the glory I have lost, the good I never knew.
           I saw the light of morning pale on princely human faces,
       In tales irrevocably gone, in final night enfurled,
     I saw the tail of flying fights, a glimpse of burning blisses,
       And laughed to think what I had lost—the wealth of all the world.
           Yea, ruined in a royal game I was before my cradle;
       Was ever gambler hurling gold who lost such things as I?
     The purple moth that died an hour ere I was born of
       That great green sunset God shall make three days after I die.
           When all the lights are lost and done, when all the skies are broken,
       Above the ruin of the stars my soul shall sit in state,
     With a brain made rich, with the irrevocable sunsets,
       And a closed heart happy in the fullness of a fate.
           So you have gained the golden crowns and grasped the golden weather,
       The kingdoms and the hemispheres that all men buy and sell,
     But I will lash the leaping drum and swing the flaring feather,
       For the light of seven heavens that are lost to me like hell.