FINALE
by Joaquin Miller
hen ye have conned the hundredth time- My sins and sagely magnified
- Your ofttold fictions into crimes
- Dark planned, and so turned all aside,
- Why then have done, I beg, I pray.
- These shadows ye have fashioned lie
- So heavily along my way.
- And I would fain have light: And I
- Would fain have love: Have love one little hour
- Ere God has plucked my day, a tearful flower.
- But when the cloud-draped day is done,
- Now happily not long for me,
- For lo! I see no more the sun,
- Say this, if say ye must, and see
- That ye mouth not the simple truth:
- "From first to last this man had naught
- Of us but insolence. From youth
- Right on, alone he silent wrought
- Nor answered us. And yet from us he knew
- But thrust of lance that thrust him through and through."
- Ah me! I mind me long agone,
- Once on a savage snow-bound height
- We pigmies pierced a king. Upon
- His bare and upreared breast till night
- We rained red arrows and we rained
- Hot lead. Then up the steep and slow
- He passed; yet ever still disdained
- To strike, or even look below.
- We found him, high above the clouds next morn
- And dead, in all his silent, splendid scorn.
- So leave me, as the edge of night
- Comes on a little time to pass,
- Or pray. For steep the stony height
- And torn by storm, and bare of grass
- Or blossom. And when I lie dead
- Oh, do not drag me down once more.
- For Jesus' sake let my poor head
- Lie pillowed with these stones. My store
- Of wealth is these. I earned them. Let me keep
- Still on alone, on mine own star-lit steep.