| Pour wine and dance if manhood still have pride, |
| Bring roses if the rose be yet in bloom; |
| The cataract
smokes upon the mountain side, |
| Our Father Rosicross is in his tomb. |
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| Pull down the blinds, bring fiddle
and clarionet |
| That there be no foot silent in the room |
| Nor mouth from kissing, nor from wine unwet; |
| Our
Father Rosicross is in his tomb. |
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|
| In vain, in vain; the cataract still cries; |
| The everlasting taper lights the
gloom; |
| All wisdom shut into his onyx eyes, |
| Our Father Rosicross sleeps in his tomb. |
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| Dance there upon the shore; |
| What need have you to care |
| For wind or water’s
roar? |
| And tumble out your hair |
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| That the salt drops have wet; |
| Being young you have not known |
| The
fool’s triumph, nor yet |
| Love lost as soon as won, |
| Nor the best labourer dead |
| And all the sheaves to
bind. |
| What need have you to dread |
| The monstrous crying of wind? |
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| Has no
one said those daring |
| Kind eyes should be more learn’d? |
| Or warned you how despairing |
| The moths are
when they are burned? |
| I could have warned you; but you are young, |
| So we speak a different tongue. |
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| O
you will take whatever’s offered |
| And dream that all the world’s a friend, |
| Suffer as your mother suffered, |
| Be as broken in the end. |
| But I am old and you are young, |
| And I speak a barbarous tongue. |