WE WHO WERE LOVERS OF LIFE
by: Louis V. Ledoux (1880-1948)
- E who were
lovers of life, who were fond of the hearth and the homeland,
- Gone like a drowner's cry borne on the perilous wind,
- Gone from the glow of the sunlight, now are in exile eternal;
- Strangers sit in the place dear to us once as our own.
-
- Happy are they; and they know not we were as strangers before
them;
- Nay, nor that others shall come: Knowledge belongs to the
dead.
- Life is so rich that the living look not away from the present;
- Eyes that the sun made blind learn in the dusk to see.
-
- Once we had friends, we had kindred; all of us now are forgotten,
- All but the hero-kings, lords of the glory of war;
- These with the founders of cities, live for a little in stories
- Told of the deeds they did, not of the men that they were.
-
- Those who were mighty but linger, shadowy forms in a legend;
- Never the minstrel's tale tells what they were to their wives.
- None on the lips of remembrance live as their children knew
them;
- Merged in the darkness kings rank with the recordless dead.
-
- Whether our lifetime brought to us joy or the burden of sorrow,
- Whether in youth or age, all when we come from the earth
- Clinging to memories wander slow through the shadowless meadows,
- Dash from the proffered cup Lethe's oblivious draught.
-
- Long are the years and uncounted passed in the seasonless
twilight
- Thinking of things that were, feeling the ache of regret;
- Slowly the echoes fade and the homeland hills are forgotten:
- Over the flame-swept waste waters of healing are poured.
-
- Lovers of action, lovers of sunlight, rovers of ocean,
- Shepherds, tillers of earth, yea, at the last we forget.
- Longer a woman remembers words that were uttered in moonlight,
- Girlhood's vision and dream, pitiful things of the home.
-
- Here by the rivers of Hades; Phlegethon, Acheron, Lethe,
- Wisdom comes, and the dead judge what they did with their
lives:
- Never the clustering vineyard yielded to any its fulness--
- Ah, but the children here playing their desolate games!
"We Who Were Lovers of Life"
is reprinted from Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1916.
Ed. William Stanley Braithwaite. New York: Laurence J. Gomme,
1916. |
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POEMS BY LOUIS V. LEDOUX |
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