The New Diana

THE NEW DIANA

An unpublished poem by Victor B. Neuburg.

Believed to have been completed on 28 September 1912.

There is a tower whereby the white moon sails

A tower within a city of the west;

Nor argent dawn shall rise as the light fails;

There on that calm, strong night’s untroubled breast,

Nor dream shall rise;

There is no high emprise.

Only the starlit summer glows and pales

In calm, unending sleep.

No sad stars weep.

But all the world sinks down with her to endless rest.

And for the moon’s untroubled easiness,

And for the soft blue starlight nestling there,

The poppied wonder of her sweet duress,

The quenched fire of the comet’s flaming hair,

No storm shall stir

The calm and poise of her

Who knows no aging of the slow world’s stress.

She lies above the Tower,

And dreams her hour,

Nor knows the pains of dawn, nor feels that day is fair.

III

She hath not felt life stirring in the slime,

Our virgin Goddess, pure and calm and strong;

She hath not known the echo in the rime,

She hath not heard the cadence in the song.

The earth and sky,

Blending have passed her by;

She hath no knowledge of her Kinsman time:

She dreams and dreams, nor wakes

As daylight breaks

Upon the younger stars that suffer long and long.

But for the world’s untroubled easiness,

And for her long unwearied motherhood,

Wherewith she holds all life in sweet duress

With flock and herd, with covey, tribe and brood,

She shall be sung

With slow, mysterious tongue,

Who brought forth life from one supreme caress—

One splendid kiss of flame

That made her tame,

And wooed her from the God’s eternal solitude.

My little wilderness of tangled dreams

Under the moon-enchanted lonely tower,

My little Land, watered by quick, rare streams,

Wherein I pass the moon’s first shady hour—

My solitude

Of virgin motherhood

Lies all along the paths where life meseems

A calm unending grace—

A virgin’s face

Under a hood, within some dark green summer bower.

So therefore shall the cadence of my song

Make troublous echoes in Thy calm, soft sleep:

Narcissus loved himself and did Thee wrong,

But I still worship Thee who dost not weep.

I see Thee pass

Along the summer grass,

And as thou passest grows day’s light more strong:

And as Thy somber power

Enchants the hour

Of the summer noon, almost the stars awake and peep.

VII

The striving starlight through the pale blue skies

Breaks in a cluster-cloud of foaming breath—

Diana, in a rain of melodies!

Diana, laughing in the eyes of Death!

O light! O sun!

O rain! O winds that run

Under the lids of Artemis’ shut eyes!

Let me awake again

After the rain

That saves thy firstling shepherd ere he perisheth!

VIII

I bore a mystic rune of wondrous things;

A little vine, a golden lilly, a cross,

A little box of nard, a swan with wings

Of gleaming silver, a shield with golden boss.

These for Thy sake

Ere my soft heart should break

Upon the sworded Wheel. Diana flings

Her mantle over me,

And sets me free

From Love and all its pain, from passion and its loss.

I bore a panther-skin through Argive woods,

I bathed me in a stream of Helicon,

Whereby a goat-herd sits and sighs, and broods

Upon the riddle of the revolving Sun.

And though he lie

Alone under the sky,

Weaving soft grasses in the solitudes

Of rock and grassy steep,

Ere he may sleep,

He shall know of Time and Love by Death made one.

I care not though the years be filled with dross,

Nor though the shepherd think he pipe in vain;

I have known Love, nor count my knowledge loss,

Because at full-moon-time I lie in pain

Watching the skies

As the soft daylight dies

On the breasts of the heavens: a subtly flaming cross

Lies on the sward,

Where Love is Lord.

I feel him live and die, and die and live again.

I have passed through the wilderness of Pan,

A tangled forest, darkly green and thick,

Where man hath striven with maid, and maid with man,

Where Love was charmed from fire with a cleft stick.

I left the fires

Unto the guardian sires

Who watched so long for a little sign that ran

At length along the grass;

They heard it pass:

One side the path the dead lay, and one side the quick.

XII

And for the world’s untroubled easiness,

A gray fawn slipping through the green summer-trees;

A maiden counting golden tress on tress;

A star-beam slipping sideways on the seas,

The field and flood,

City and solitude,

Are merged within the sunset’s dim caress;

Soft-lined and gray,

The gentle day

Lies over hills and streams, blue mountains, verdant trees.

XIII

There is a maiden glad Apollo’s kin

Who slew Arctaeon, for that he profaned

The sylvan haunt she used to wander in—

She slew him as the golden daylight waned.

As he, so I

Am slain by majesty,

For that I saw the wonder of Thy skin,

Diana of my dream!

Thy spirit’s stream

Is redeemed with my blood, that cruelly Thou hast drained.

XIV

In halting song, song drawn from me by tears

Of maidenhood, and peach-bloom down, and song,

I measure out the passage of the years,

When Love shall lead a passing soul along,

By mirroring streams

Wherein are rippling dreams

Of olden loves and lives; and hopes and fears

Reflected, break away until

The image spill

Her truth upon the banks of life serene and strong.

Also, there is a great white Unicorn,

With broad gold collar, and red ruby eyes,

Whom I found hidden in the virgin morn,

Laughing to death under the yellow skies.

What thing is this

Shall then be seen, I wis,

When he shall rush with his exalted horn

Into the heart o’ the world,

Where is empearled

A flaming core of That that neither lives nor dies.

XVI

Lo. There are dark green woods for wandering in,

With giant elms, and sunny oaks, and beeches

Copper and green, and wavering streamlets thin;

And there are silver vines, and little reaches

Of waters gray

That flicked through the day

And the still white moonlight; and their tender speeches

Echo through all the woods,

And solitudes

So easy to see, and yet so utterly hard to win.

XVII

I will sing in measures unremembered, troubled,

Beautiful dreams, whose memory is a pain;

Slow winding ways that lead to streams that bubbled

Springs whose white waters shall rise and sparkle again

Into the blue

Sweet haze of summer dew.

And shadowy nymphs run, lightly green: they doubled

Around the fountain’s rim.

White-armed and dim

They presage love bereft of hope, and summer rain.

XVIII

In a deserted field a statue rises

Bare silver arms unto a light, pale sky;

With words in unknown tongues, with purple phrases,

It seems to speak forgotten lore; and I

Lie on the sward

And hail Adonis lord,

That he may smoothe the tangle of the mazes

Within my wildered thought.

Save him is naught

To quench the tumultuous words ere that wild speech may die.

XIX

All barren things, God wot, the green field-fairies,

The soft gray rain that falls upon the sea,

The blood-stained sunset on the desert prairies,

The widowed dove’s monotonous psalmody,

Come to mine ears

Like love’s exalted fears,

And like the dulcet agony that was Mary’s

They bring low wonderment

To my content:

I sleep again in time, in the world’s virginity.

And all the lightly sleeping sunset’s tears,

The easy dreams that hovered over Rome,

Before she burst the bondage of her years,

Before young Venus and her seven-fold comb,

Break, subtly sure,

Calmly, most easy-fure,

Dark-set, betwixt the pillars of Night’s fears:

The wind-enchanted place,

The temple’s grace,

The red light of the hearth, the even-song of home.

XXI

And so the obscurest worship of Eros,

Before the spirit twinned with life’s soft grace,

Burst through the bonds of matter at the close

Of life, a thorn set in the spirit, a place

Betwixt the breasts

Of day; her soft breasts

Are cried about the Temple, whence there blows

A wind through the firmament,

Most subtly blent

With the bitterness of Venus, and all her manifold woes.

XXII

And so I chant a litany of desire

Into the ears of life’s most willing priest—

He who stands guardian of the altar fire,

The olden Jahweh, called the twice-crowned beast;

The god of eld,

Who subtly hath compelled

The nuptials of flesh and spirit: yea! he is sire

Of all the dust

That whirls in space, and must

Rise into conscious life ere it may be released.

XXIII

There is a twilight where the gods find rest

Betwixt the casting-forth of sun and sun;

There is one spot upon the great god’s breast

Where life may slumber and with death be one:

There is one grace

Within that high god’s face

That man may know in death; the silent west

Where slumbering Eros

May find the close

Of all the ills of Time, ere Time’s slow reign be done

XXIV

O virgin earth that shall be born anew!

O ceaseless agony wherein I dwell!

I shall not know the wonderment of you:

I shall be set forever in my hell.

I shall not know

The star-streams’ ebb and flow,

The easy moon, the calm unending blue,

The golden dawn

Wherein I chased the Faun—

Promethean fires shall scorch, all Hades’ pæan swell!

XXV

And for the world untroubled easiness,

And for the soft, blue, foaming, starlit sky,

It shall be well to sleep, nor know the stress

Of aching life that ends in death: I lie

Upon the sward

And hail Apollo lord,

But he shall not prevail; the light grows less

Even as thus I gaze.

There shall be days

When I shall call in vain, and long in vain to die.

XXVI

For lo! there is a ravishment by Death,

Of the last virginity of trembling Life;

The incestuous welding of the spirit and breath,

The slow, dumb ache of the deserted wife:

Diana! Come

Unto thy kingdom; dumb,

I wait thy footsteps. . . . . Ah! She slumbereth

Beneath the planets’ chain,

Nor comes again

For all the bitterness of the world’s unending strife.

XXVII

Diana! I have left the mystic Way,

I seek thee simply in the spring-set woods;

There is no song that hath been sung today

That may accord with Thee and Thy mystic moods.

How may I find

Thee? Surely I am blind

With dark excess of light, a blinding spray

From the wise, mystic sun;

Shall we be one,

Diana, virgin still, while the sun hotly broods?

XXVIII

I bear a panther-skin the woods among,

And I bear a sheep-crook of a young oak-bough;

I bear thy name forever on my tongue.

Shall I seek thee ever as I seek thee now?

Shall I still seek,

Although thou may’st not speak,

Though, all my song remain to thee unsung?

The oak-woods call me still:

Shall I fulfil

The undreamt dream, and break the still unbroken vow?

XXIX

Yea! For the world’s untroubled easiness,

And for the calm of her immortal sleep,

I sing my songs unto the Ministress

To ease my durance in the world. Wilt keep,

Diana, still

The old immortal ill

Thou bearest through the world for her distress?

Still shall I sing to thee

My melody

Of olden mortal pains, of men that wake to weep?

XXX

For in the latter years I have been born,

When men no more Thy secret worship know;

But in mine eyes Thou mayest read the scorn

Of all save Thee, Diana, and Thy woe:

In evil days

I come to sing Thy praise:

I pass through the oak woods sounding still my horn;

Perchance thou shalt be mine,

As I am thine:

For me that singly gaze watch the same planets glow.

XXXI

And there are flowery islands in the West,

Where crocuses and jonquils vie with June,

And rose and hawthorn lie on summer’s breast,

Lulled into sleep by a broad harvest-moon;

And tigers play

Where springs the earliest may;

And charmed snakes lie coiled in subtle rest.

And for a single hour

Awakes the power

Of the virgin world of eld crushed to one summer morn.

XXXII

And there is set my moon-enchanted place,

My tower of lilies, calm and pure and strong,

Casting sweet shade upon the summer’s grace,

Where island-fairies gather long and long,

And sway in dance

In praise of Thee and Chance

Who casts his dice here; and Thine unveiled face

Looks on the brooding woods

And solitudes

That shall bring forth a harvest of sweet immortal song.

XXXIII

And here the seasons dwell not; there is none

That hath been born of man within these isles;

The immortality of an immortal sun

Hath conquered birth, and in Death’s eyes birth smiles,

Nor sees the way

Where to the empty day

Leads in the silences; the thing is done

In sight of earth and sky:

The hot hours die

Slowly: and day is dead through chaste Diana’s wiles.

XXXIV

Oh, who shall bear the burden of this thing?

And who shall turn the key within the gate?

The ivy garlands who shall fitly bring?

Who shall give answer to the call of Fate?

There is no way

Unto that secret day;

And all my song is vain; yet must I sing:

Perchance one ear may find

The secret: blind

Mine eyes may be; but yet I hear, and wait, and wait.

XXXV

There is a peach-bloom web of thinnest gold

Set over my brows; I feel the light that falls

As a bridal-veil upon me; fold on fold

I am enmeshed; again I see the walls,

The dome, the choir,

And the immortal fire,

Dianna! again the air comes rushing cold—

The censer smokes anew;

The air is blue,

Diana! Diana! Diana! in thine eternal halls.

XXXVI

I was thy priest, Diana. Then, as now,

Thy virginal mantle fell upon me; then

I touched the marble brilliance of thy brow;

And answered to the cry, She cometh! . . . . . when?

Thy temple grew

More softly palely blue:

Then came the call, the Vow! the Vow! the Vow!

. . . . . The vision fades:

The cool, green colonnades

Of the temple fade, Diana: again I am of men.

XXXVII

A white bird calling through the cloudless blue—

Fluttering wings—a virgin snood undone—

A dryad gone astray, beneath a yew

Weeping—a rush of feet—a scorching sun—

And then a cry:

O love!—die!—die!

I die for lack of maidenhead and you.

And the world slowly fades;

The colonnades

Are cool again; the secret hour is wholly run.

XXXVIII

So for the world’s untroubled easiness,

And the wise afterglow of passionate love,

I bring my songs to ease Thy fierce distress;

And on my shoulders is a soft, gray dove,

Who whispers, See

The world’s virginity

Is still inviolate: now the Ministress

Shall ease the pangs of birth,

And soothe the earth,

With ivy-garlands wreathed her gentle brows above.

XXXVIV

Oh, who shall ease the burden of the years?

And who shall quench the scathing for of life?

Save it be she who weeps unending tears

For the violate love of the world’s virgin wife?

She waits her hour

Under the moony Tower;

She hears the Call that slays, the Call that sears;

Nor heeds at all the pain

That comes again

Despite the balm she bears for the unending strife.

I will bring roses sharply set with thorns,

I will bring lilies that must pale and fade;

And I will lead the Goat—and on his horns

Shall be impaled the corpse of a vestal maid

Unto the place

Of pale Diana’s grace:

And she shall take the sacrifice. What morns

Of sunlight glamorous

Shall rise o’er us

Who wait the mystic answer, and wait it unafraid!

XLI

Ah! Still I have no sacrifice to bring,

Because my spirit’s maidenhood is lost;

And I have sought and found not anything

She shall take, and count as gain the cost.

I wait in vain

And know the eternal pain,

That partly because I sing

I have lost the immortal Way

And fold my day,

My only day of life: with woe my path is crossed.

XLII

I have not anything to bring to Thee,

Diana, I have cast my life away;

I have slain my love, wasted virginity,

And cast my lyre where the lost phantoms stray.

I have no word

That by Thee may be heard,

Or, being heard, be answered. I am free

To roam the empty spaces,

And see blank faces

In all the stars. For me there shall be no more day.

XLIII

My goddess, I am born two thousand years

Too late to worship Thee; my way is set

Betwixt the columns of vanquished hopes and fears,

In an aisle of the temple that is called Regret.

I hear my doom:

Go forth into the gloom,

And find the world that shall reach my waiting ears;

Go forth an outcast: go!!

That thou may’st know

Thou never shalt attain, and never shalt forget!

XLIV

Yea! all my world of strife shall end in this,

Thou shalt not know; thou never shalt attain,

Until I bend from heaven with a kiss,

Until with thee I share my immortal pain.

Thou shalt not find

The Way, for thou are blind:

But thou shalt hear Time’s serpents hiss and hiss,

And coil around thy path.

Know thou my wrath,

And know, false shepherd, thou must seek for ever in vain.

XLV

It shall not be for thee, my sacred wood;

The ivy-garlands shall not grace thy brow,

Thou, that hast scorned my virgin solitude,

Thou, that hast broken my most virginal vow.

Yea! thou shalt die

Under an alien sky,

Nor ever dare to unloose My virgin sword:

Thou shalt live lone and ill:

Beneath my hill,

Nor ever shalt thou know; thou shalt be as lone as now.

XLVI

O My Lost shepherd. O My little one!

Oh, wherefore hast thou done this saddest thing?

Thou hast exiled thyself from light and sun,

And from the Maid who gave thee power to sing:

For ever lie

Alone beneath the sky,

Watching vague dreams as fleeting doublets run,

To be lost in light! . . . . .

For thee the night;

For Me the desolation, and the immortal sting!

XLVII

Yea! But thou shalt awake in agony

From the hot dreams that thou hast miscalled sleep;

And thou shalt call all vainly unto Me,

Who may not heed thee though thou groan and weep;

Nay; though a flood

Of brine and tears and blood

Come from thee, I will give no heed to thee

Who hast spurned My holy name,

And quenched the flame

With mortal love, to slay my fires that live and leap.

XLVIII

O little leaping flames that wrap thee round!

How shall the chaste Diana reach thee now,

Save that thou crush the serpent thou hast found,

Even as thy breast, shall it sully My white brow?

Ah, heedless fool

To scorn My virgin rule,

And fall an easy prey upon the ground

Forbidden! Thou shalt know

The depth of woe

That comes to them who break the sacred maiden-vow!

XLIX

For thou hast fouled My most arcanest name,

And thou hast cast thy filthy words at Me;

Thou hast profaned the sweet, immortal flame

That guards the shrine of My virginity!

Now be thou cursed

With ever-growing thirst

That shall seize thee ever when my vocal shame

Bursts from thy throat!

Yea! let Mine image float,

Never to be attained, before the eyes of thee.

Before thine eyes the tantalizing thing!

Upon thy lips the ever-weakening wail

Oh, but I hear a sharp immortal sting,

That shall sting on although the body fail:

For thou hast heard

O fool! the sacred word,

And heeded not! What healing shall I bring

To one who craves for Me,

And may not be

My lover for ever, although his soul was ever pale?

But for the world’s untroubled easiness,

The endless motherhood, the unending pain!

Thou shouldst die utterly in thy distress;

But the kindly earth shall bear thee once again.

Oh, fall and cry

O Earth! I die! I die!—

Except thou save me: she shall answer, Yes.

Through all the circling sky

Shall sound her cry:

I bear no single life all utterly in vain!

LII

Oh, soft Diana, the immortal pure!

Can only mother-earth securely serve?

Only the glad ripe mother-breast secure,

Touched into life by the immortal nerve?

Thy rhythmic sway

Of alternate night and day,

Calm, passionless, eternal, utterly sure:

The eternal dark and light

From depth and height:

’Twixt these the soul is fixed; from these no soul may swerve.

LIII

The rolling seasons, rolling round the stars,

The birth and death of deities and men,

The funeral feasts, triumphant nuptial cars,

The life of worms within the funeral pen—

All things that be

The wings that shadow me,

Bear me unto Thee, goddess! Nenuphars

Eternal bloom for me! . . . .

Bear me to Thee!

To Thee! And thou shalt whisper softly to me ‘Then?’

LIV

And then more life! I may not ’scape from Thee:

I shall be born anew to worship still,

For ever blooming in virginity,

The spirit striving in eternal will:

Shall this then be

Mine immortality?

Shall it be mine ever to worship Thee?

Nor shall I find the way

’Twixt night and day,

The road ’twixt birth and death, beyond all good and ill?

Yea! For the world’s soft secret; still arcane,

Save when the breezes blow the veil apart;

The virgin goddess, flawless, without stain,

Stands with Her hand pressed to Her beating heart.

All quiet dreams

That float on starlit streams

Are Hers, and come from Her; there is no pain

Of the lost fairy-world,

But is impearled

In that soft breast: from Her all moon-lit visions start.

LVI

Astarte Thou wast called in Babylon,

My Lady Artemis, Thou secret Core,

Who, in the young world, seven powers had won,

With lamp-lit heart for virgins to adore.

Diana! Chaste

Thy breast, unbound, unlaced;

Thou holdest a candle to the serpent-sun,

To lead his fiery eyes

To slow surprise;

In the softly-gleaming east to sleep for ever more.

LVII

O Rose of slumber! Sharon in the East

Holdeth Thy golden throne; Thy wings are curled

About the Lynx; the seven-headed beast

Who draws the chariot of the teeming world:

How art Thou proud

Upon Thy light-blue cloud

Girt round with stars! Thou gazest down, and seest

No single lonely star;

Unto the bar

Of the utmost bounds of space Thy golden-green wings are unfurled.

LVIII

O Rose of slumber! Slumber has me now;

I have seen Thee, and fallen into the Abyss:

Over me is the vision of Thy brow,

Marble and bluely-veined, unstained by kiss

Of any light

Wandering by night. By night

I have fulfilled, O Isis mine, Thy vow.

And I have pondered long

On Thy slow song

Under the stancèd choir the primal serpent’s hiss.

LIX

To one soft point of light, one tongue of flame

All ways are set; all ways that lead to Thee:

There all Thy names are merged in one soft name.

To let the sacred fire for ever free,

The eternal brand

Is poised in thy hand

Above the world. Above all worlds the same

Red ever-flaming torch

Doth guard the porch

Of the temple of the Moon in her first chastity.

Oh, though I violate Thee with my song,

Diana, Oh, forgive me that I cry

Loudly to Thee; for Thou art cool and strong,

And I am hot and passionate, and must die,

I know; nor find

The Centre, stern and blind;

There is no ending to my life of wrong.

My lonely path hath led

Among the dead,

And still unknowing Thee, in earthly Love I lie.

LXI

O slow Diana of the virgin years!

It is enough to know that Thou hast been;

That earth’s soft dew-falls are thy virgin tears;

That spring is born because Thy soul is green.

Enough it is

To feel thy chastest kiss

In the soft touch of starlight; know no fears

Of the cold grasp of Death;

To breathe calm breath

At last beneath Thy star, that shines secure, unseen.

LXII

In all the world the virgin soul remains,

For him who hath been born beneath Thy star,

Selene; he must weep the silver stains

That follow in the wake of Thy bright car;

The woodland elves

Sing to him; they themselves

Fade into slumber as the full moon wanes;

The listening trees are stirred

By Thy soft word,

Borne on the breeze of night, to reach the world from far.

LXIII

Diana, virginal, smiles upon the seas,

And the lonely hills, and the responding woods;

The touch of starlight is the light that frees

The glamour of the old world and her moods.

Few Pagans now

Adore Thy pure, soft brow;

Thy calm blue eyes, the dove-like melodies

That growing grasses make.

In slow calm ache

In Spring reborn, with all her clamorous multitudes.

LXIV

Our Lady Isis by the moony Tower

Where I have seen Thee—I alone of men

Have striven to recall Thy secret power;

The odour of Thy musk; Thy dove and wren,

Who sing Thy word.

Oh, I alone have heard,

And I have seen Thee in the woodbine-flower:

Yea! I at length have been

Lost in Thy green;

I have sung the ancient things of Thy lost world again.

LXV

In green fields and on hill-tops have I found Thee,

The secret One; the Virgin, who dost bring

The mournful glamour of eld, the world that bound Thee

In silken chains of song. Could I but sing

As they who lie

Asleep beneath the sky!—

Well, it is well: for I have cast around Thee

The old forgotten veil

Of starlight pale

And mystic air. Diana! Thou art every thing!

LXVI

Still for the world’s untroubled easiness

Under the foolish toil of latter days,

Still of the lonely places, ministress

Art Thou of wonder, and the sweet amaze

That comes to those

Who seek the olden Rose

Amidst the fret and toil of our distress;

Who seek the sacred Stone,

Unseen, alone

In Thy dark secret woods, in Thy green and mossy ways.

LXVII

But in the slumbrous wonderment of time

Thou shalt dwell forever in the dreamy west,

Till one shall speak again the secret rime

That shall pierce unto Thine holy virgin breast.

Would it were I!

Yet must I surely die

For lack of Thee; my soul is past its prime,

For I have lost the track:

I die for lack

Of the sight of Thee; for this I never may find rest.

LXVIII

Thou shalt be born anew; the years shall bring

One who will blazon forth the age’s truth;

One who with an unwearying lyre shall sing,

And whose wild singing shall in very sooth

Awake the gold,

Great wonderment of old:

Were it but mine to bring to pass this thing!

I would not waste my years

With foolish tears

For things long dead: for me would waken the world’s youth!

LXIX

Two thousand years late too late! or it may be

Two thousand years too soon! I cannot tell

Wherefore it is not mine to sing of Thee.

But Thou art immortal, it is well

That I have seen

The ever-virgin green

Of the spring-set woods: one lyre at least was free

For lo! I am of them

Thy diadem

Both hold in sway. One bard at least didst Thou impel!

LXX

There is a tower whereby the white moon sails,

Here, in a lonely city in the West;

No dawn may rise until her white light pales

Upon the calm blue Night’s untroubled breast.

My lyre is cold

Beneath the silvern, old

Slow glory ever new, that never fails.

Oh, Luna of the Tower,

I want Thine hour,

Till with the world at peace, I sink into Thy rest.

EPILOGUE

The word is sad; and the morning

Lies on me like a pall:

To me there came no warning

Till I passed beyond recall

To the Fate beyond the Wall.

Lo! I am stripped of all.

The hour is fled, and the glory

Is fled from the world I knew:

And here I have told my story,—

I that was counted true,

Who was reckoned among the few,

Fell. Now, what may I do?

My life is dead! Save dying,

There is nothing more to be feared;

For no man lives by lying,

When the scroll of his fame is smeared,

When his soul is foully seared:

And a man must dree his weird.