It is too late! Ah, nothing is too late
Till the tired heart shall cease to palpitate.
Cato learned Greek at eighty; Sophocles
Wrote his grand Oedipus, and Simonides
Bore off the prize of verse from his compeers,
When each had numbered more than fourscore years,
And Theophrastus, at fourscore and ten,
Had but begun his "Characters of Men."
Chaucer, at Woodstock with the nightingales,
At sixty wrote the Canterbury Tales;
Goethe at Weimar, toiling to the last,
Completed Faust when eighty years were past.

" MORE SONGS FROM VAGABONDIA "

I

Whose furthest footstep never strayed
Beyond the village of his birth
Is but a lodger for the night
In this old wayside inn of earth.

To-morrow he shall take his pack,
And set out for the ways beyond
On the old trail from star to star,
An alien and a vagabond.

II

If any record of our names
Be blown about the hills of time,
Let no one sunder us in death, —
The man of paint, the men of rhyme.

It was not long e're he perceiv'd the skies
Setled to raine, and a black cloud arise,
Whose foggy grosnesse so oppos'd the light,
As it would turne the noone-sted into night.
When the winde came about with all his power,
Into the tayle of this approching shower,
And it to lighten presently began;
Quicker then thought, from East to West that ran:
The Thunder following did so fiercely rave,
And through the thick clouds with such fury drave,
As Hell had been set open for the nonce,
And all the Divels heard to rore at once:

Swift fleet the billowy clouds along the sky,
Earth seems to shudder at the storm aghast;
While only beings as forlorn as I,
Court the chill horrors of the howling blast.
Even round yon crumbling walls, in search of food,
The ravenous Owl foregoes his evening flight,
And in his cave, within the deepest wood,
The Fox eludes the tempest of the night.
But to my heart congenial is the gloom
Which hides me from a World I wish to shun;

Quhen Noye had maid his Sacrifyce,
Thankand God of his Benifyce,
He standand on mont Armanye,
Quhare he the countre mycht espye,
Ye may beleve his hart was sore,
Seyng the erth, quhilk wes affore
The Flude so plesand and perfyte,
Quhilk to behald wes gret delyte,
That now was barren maid and bair,
Afore quhilk fructuous was and fair.
The plesand treis beryng fructis
Wer lyand revin up be the rutis.
The holsum herbis and fragrant flouris
Had tynt boith vertew and cullouris.
The feildis grene and fluryst meidis

After the Grand Tour

Just broke from school, pert, impudent, and raw,
Expert in Latin, more expert in taw,
His Honour posts o'er Italy and France,
Measures St. Peter's dome, and learns to dance.
Thence, having quick through various countries flown,
Gleaned all their follies, and exposed his own,
He back returns, a thing so strange all o'er,
As never ages past produced before;
A monster of such complicated worth,
As no one single clime could e'er bring forth;
Half atheist, papist, gamester, bubble, rook,

I now solicit not the Muses nine,
Terpsichore jig-dancing, Clio famed
For bold romance in history, or thee,
Goddess land-measuring, Thalia called:
Nor thee, Euterpe! do I supplicate,
Flute-am'rous virgin, or that other maid,
Erato hight, renowned for wanton tale
Risiferous, or lively song jocose.
Urania too I leave, star-gazing fair,
And dear Calliope, who first produced
Harmonious bag-pipe, causing ev'ry child
In Scotland's dreary region to rejoice;
And thee, Melpomene! with blubbered face,
I quit disdainful; neither will I pay,

cowley: Hope, whose weak being ruined is
Alike if it succeed and if it miss;
Whom ill and good doth equally confound,
And both the horns of Fate's dilemma wound;
Vain shadow! that doth vanish quite
Both at full noon and perfect night.
The Fates have not a possibility
Of blessing thee.
If things then from their ends we happy call,
'Tis Hope is the most hopeless thing of all.

crashaw: Dear Hope! Earth's dowry and Heaven's debt,
The entity of things that are not yet.
Subtlest but surest being! thou by whom

An old monk perches at the tip of a tree —
but this is only external samadhi!
Master Wu's brush is imbued with spirit,
but even he can't paint the Buddha-Nature!

Desolate poems of chaotic times — could I bear
to hear them again?
Misty peaks like ochre wash,
waters like burnt-out ash!
Beneath Po Chü-i's embankment of white sand,
reeds from the era of T'ang;
beside the tomb of the Prince of O,
clouds that date from Sung.
In the trees the orioles —
today they are my friends;
perched on a branch, a cuckoo sings —
in days of old, a king!
Like " K'un-ming Lake, " after dissolution —
a bell still sounds through the air:
coiling among the lakeside mountains
it proclaims eventide.