73 LIGHT COINAGE

That comedy we end, content to please Its players merely, was a comedy Wherein Love had no part. It may not be Enrolled among Love’s mighty memories, And men unborn will read of Héloïse, And Ruth, and Rosamond, and Semelê, When none remembers your name’s melody Or rhymes your name enregistered with these. And will my name wake moods as amorous As that of Abélard or Lancelot Arouses? be recalled when Pyramus And Tristram are unrhymed of and forgot?— Time’s laughter answers, who accords to us More gracious fields, wherein we harvest—what?

A singer, eh?... Well, well! but when he sings Take jealous heed lest idiosyncrasies Entinge and taint too deep his melodies; See that his lute has no discordant strings To harrow us; and let his vaporings Be all of virtue and its victories, And of man’s best and noblest qualities, And scenery, and flowers, and similar things. Thus bid our paymasters, whose mutterings Some few deride, and blithely link their rhymes At random; and, as ever, on frail wings Of wine-stained paper scribbled with such rhymes Men mount to heaven, and loud laughter springs From hell’s midpit, whose fuel is such rhymes.