A Sonnet of Good Cheer

 

Fling wide the portals, rose-lipped dawn has come

To kill our drowsy visions into life;

Let me arise, a-lust for love and strife

To follow far some distant, pulsing drum.

Upon my vibrant soul-chords passions strum;

With hot, red, leaping blood my veins are rife.

Gods, let me take the universe to wife!

Ere Death, the cold accountant, close my sum.

 

Then as I spake, methought fierce laughter came

Across the dying hills where sunrise shot;

"Fool, fool, you come unbidden to this game,

"And Death that takes you hence shall ask you not.

"From life, this and only this, may you claim;

"Living, to die, and dying, be forgot."