More Modern Love

My destiny is less secure than lust Which claims but earth, Of less enduring worth, Than dreams.... The iron reaches with its rust Into my soul; the maggots of the clay Stir with a hunger that is divinely just For my allotted and inevitable decay. My kinship with the stars is, in the play, The tragedy of my return to dust. For you I love, and for me whom I dream, I rise out of the roots of my desire, Lay a gold canopy fringed with the sun’s fire Over our bodies whether they may seem Clasped on a marriage-bed, Or lying together pale in the sword’s gleam Cold and clean and naked and so dead. But surely I can never dare to deem That for the flame there will not soon be lead. The gifts of any memorable night Are insufficient. Time will put aside The record of those hours; Death deride The laughter caught in their swift-plucked delight. Life fades; they fade; The moon returns; we singly retrograde Turn to discover what is gone from sight. More fortunate the way the rocks are made, Insensate, undesired; for us a sorrier plight. I order all the fictions of the past, Deductions from the facts, to fashion law, But analyzed, all things I ever saw, Will not maintain a symmetry to the last. No law will hold; And though I tear the soil, am overbold, Twisting and turning from the ultimate mould, I cannot ever catch to bind God fast. Beauty may come to me when I am old, Now I see pearls, and know not by whom cast. So I can give you only what may die, My destiny, my mansions in the sky, My longing for the Gods: I give you things That only make me afraid that I am I And still no more,—innate reechoings Of trumpetings for deeds a long-time done, Or is it that they are not yet begun? For answer of the sort a mortal brings Lust is a better mistress to have won. Not understanding this, I tell you why My heart sings thus;—Someday no more it sings. MAXWELL E. FOSTER.