We sit before the curtain, and we heed the pleasant bustle:
The ushers hastening up the aisles, the fans' and programmes' rustle;
The boy that cries librettos, and the soft, incessant sound
Of talking and low laughter that buzzes all around.
How very old the drop-scene looks! A thousand times before
I've seen that blue paint dashing on that red distemper shore;
The castle and the guazzo sky, the very ilex-tree,—
They have been there a thousand years,—a thousand more shall be.
All our lives we have been waiting for that weary daub to rise;
We have peeped behind its edges, "as if we were God's spies;"
We have listened for the signal; yet still, as in our youth,
The colored screen of matter hangs between us and the truth.
When in my careless childhood I dwelt beside a wood,
I tired of the clearing where my father's cabin stood;
And of the wild young forest paths that coaxed me to explore,
Then dwindled down, or led me back to where I stood before.
But through the woods before our door a wagon track went by,
Above whose utmost western edge there hung an open sky;
And there it seemed to make a plunge, or break off suddenly,
As though beneath that open sky it met the open sea.
Oh, often have I fancied, in the sunset's dreamy glow,
That mine eyes had caught the welter of the ocean waves below;
And the wind among the pine-tops, with its low and ceaseless roar,
Was but an echo from the surf on that imagined shore.
Alas! as I grew older, I found that road led down
To no more fair horizon than the squalid factory town:
So all life's purple distances, when nearer them I came,
Have played me still the same old cheat,—the same, the same, the same!
And when, O King, the heaven departeth as a scroll,
Wilt thou once more the promise break thou madest to my soul?
Shall I see thy feasting presence thronged with baron, knight, and page?
Or will the curtain rise upon a dark and empty stage?
For lo, quick undulations across the canvas run;
The foot-lights brighten suddenly, the orchestra has done;
And through the expectant silence rings loud the prompter's bell;
The curtain shakes,—it rises. Farewell, dull world, farewell!