Page:Anthology of Magazine Verse (1921).djvu/213

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THE SORROWFUL MASQUERADE
Even as to a music, stately and sad,The young girls' feet begin to move in a dance,And curiously for joy shift and advance;So to a mournful waltz, sombre and sweet;All laughing things move with delighted feet,So all things that draw light and laughing breathMove to the mournful waltz of life and death.Comedy is a girl dancing in timeTo the tragic pipes, sorrowful and sublime;And ever she laughs back, and as she skipsMimics the mournful music with her lips;Then for sheer anger at her own pretenseSobs violently at her own vehemence,And mocks her tears. But when the pipings sleepShe needs must cover up her face and weep.
Poetry, A Magazine of VerseJohn Hall Wheelock


PLAINT
Brief is Man's travail here and transitory His wrath that soon is spent, Brief his lament,  Lifted in vain against the harsh decrees  Of the high Destinies That move not to the measure of his woe: Even as snowOn sunny meadows, as a lover's story Told in an April twilight long ago,  Brief is he even as these—His little hour of tumult, or of glory—  And to what end devised we may not guess, Considering, as we go

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