Classic Poem

John A'Var's Last Lay

(He becomes a Carmelite)

Take not from me my lute!
There is a spirit caught among its wires
That sentient thrills as if with living fires, —
Freres! let me keep my lute.

It may not be? ah, well, —
Once more ere yet thou diest, O breathing string!
That plainest like the heart of sad sea-shell,
And talk'st to me with voice of living thing.
Sad now art thou and I —
Loved lute, ring out, ring out ere yet we die.

Ring out the clash of swords!
The meeting shock! ring out the victor's strain!
Or dirge, when peasants tramp o'er knights and lords, —
Jarring when the war trumpet blows amain,
And scattered all afield
The shivered lance-shaft and the shattered shield.

Ring out to ladies' eyes!
To love's wild ecstasy of joy and woe,
To morning's mantling blush, to passionate sighs
That heave the rose-tipped mamelons of snow,
To gage d'amor, I ween,
That wakes the rapturous thought of — once hath been.

Ring out the words of fire!
'Gainst pride and hate and tyranny the strong,
'Gainst proud man's arrogance, and weak man's ire,
And all the lusts that work the world wrong,
'Gainst envy, lie and ill
Ring out protest once more, and then be still!

Wake gently softer themes!
Of white-frocked children dead on cottage floors,
Of dances 'neath the jasmine-clustered beams,
Of greybeards drinking at the trellised doors,
Of immortelles on graves,
Of red-cheeked lasses where the ripe corn waves.

This world hath been so fair,
So full of joyousness! Then what am I
That I should thankless spurn God's blessid air
And shut my lids against the sunshine sky?
But that is idle breath,
Life may be quiet, even if life in death.

Dying as echo dies,
Faint, and more faint, loved lute, expires my lay,
And though my Lays have not been overwise
Yet now methinks with thee I best could pray.
Our mission now is o'er,
O Soul of Song! fly free! No more. No more.

Loved lute, farewell. Farewell with other things.
But though, for me, I henceforth am the Lord's,
No meaner hand shall ever touch thy chords —
Thus — thus — I rive thy strings!English