Poems — Lost

LOST

So you have gained the golden crowns, so you have piled together The laurels and the jewels, the pearls out of the blue, But I will beat the bounding drum and I will fly the feather For all the glory I have lost, the good I never knew.

I saw the light of morning pale on princely human faces, In tales irrevocably gone, in final night enfurled, I saw the tail of flying fights, a glimpse of burning blisses, And laughed to think what I had lost--the wealth of all the world.

Yea, ruined in a royal game I was before my cradle;

Was ever gambler hurling gold who lost such things as I?

The purple moth that died an hour ere I was born of That great green sunset God shall make three days after I die.

When all the lights are lost and done, when all the skies are broken, Above the ruin of the stars my soul shall sit in state, With a brain made rich, with the irrevocable sunsets, And a closed heart happy in the fullness of a fate.

So you have gained the golden crowns and grasped the golden weather, The kingdoms and the hemispheres that all men buy and sell, But I will lash the leaping drum and swing the flaring feather, For the light of seven heavens that are lost to me like hell.