The Lion and the Rose by May Sarton Read Free Book Online

old documents.
    The scholar at his desk burned like a lover.
    At century’s end behold the sceptic rules;
    Doubt, like the tyrant’s servants, seals
    The visionary books. The scholar’s passion,
    His burning heart is wholly out of fashion.
    The human spirit goes, the caste prevails.
    Urbane and foxy, the professors shut
    Up Michelet in his coffin and abandon
    To entomologists the wild and living truth
    To pin down in their books like any moth.
    The mandarins come in, the men go out.
    Now is detachment the supreme holy word
    (Above all take no part nor risk your head);
    Forgotten are Erasmus’ pilgrimages
    By these who fabricate and love their cages—
    Has truth then never buckled on a sword?
    Never forget this when the talk is clever:
    Wisdom must be born in the flesh or wither,
    And sacred order has been always won
    From chaos by some burning faithful one
    Whose human bones have ached as if with fever
    To bring you to these high triumphant places.
    Forget the formulas, remember men.
    Praise scholars, for their never-ending story
    Is written out in fire and this is their glory.
    Read faith as on a lover’s in their faces.

WHAT THE OLD MAN SAID
    For Lugné-Poe, founder of the Oeuvre Theatre in Paris
    At sixty-five said, “I fight every day.
    My dear, nothing but death will stop
    My uninterrupted élan in the play.”
    Then wrote, “When I am forced to see
    What happens to our old humanity,
    All seems ignoble and I rage
    To have been listed player on this stage.”
    At sixty-five that anger conquered fear:
    The old man raged, but he did not despair.
    At sixty-seven then he laughed and said,
    “My dear, how proud I am of all the haters
    Who stand behind and wish that I were dead,”
    Those who had tasted of his honesty,
    Those usurers of mediocrity—
    At sixty-seven he refused to praise
    (And lost his job) their rotten little plays.
    But when he told me how he shouted there,
    The old man laughed, but he did not despair.
    He said at seventy, “But we must work, my dear.
    I see a certain look upon their faces.
    Discouragement? Perhaps I dream it there.
    The wicked times have put me back to school,
    And I shall die a sensitive young fool.
    The news is doing me to death at last.”
    And then a note, “The evil eats me fast.
    You must help men not to be slaves, my dear!”
    (The old man died, but he did not despair.)

NOT ALWAYS THE QUIET WORD
    No, not always the quiet word,
    Sometimes scabbards must split
    On the leaping fire of the sword,
    A Cromwell break from it.
    No, not always calm thought
    And mind in contemplation,
    But clarity, white-hot,
    Swift’s savage indignation.
    Not always the silent, strong,
    Who means more than he states,
    Sometimes the passionate song,
    Fierce Dante, bitter Yeats.
    Not always statesmen steadfast,
    Ice-cool before their work,
    Sometimes the fiery blast,
    The eloquence of Burke.
    No, not always calm lovers
    Compassionate and wise,
    But the world-shakers and movers
    With anger in their eyes.
    And not always peace-choosers,
    Sometimes imperfect, brave,
    Uncompromising fighters
    Are given a world to save.

ROMAN HEAD
    First Century A.D.
    An empire closing in
    Clamps round the virile head,
    As if he wore a crown,
    As if the cropped hair weighed.
    An open world of roads
    Once branched out from his hand,
    Now broken colonnades,
    The arch sucked up by sand.
    From those intense blank eyes
    The intellect looks out
    On nineteen centuries
    And reads its own defeat.
    This is the mortal head,
    The fiery gloom on shade,
    The master mastered
    By the world he made.
    This is the Roman head,
    Riddled with self-despair,
    By power corrupted—
    The spirit fled to air,
    The brittle glory fled.

NAVIGATOR
    This lazy prince of tennis balls and lutes,
    Marvelous redhead who could eat and have his cake,
    Collector of hot jazz, Japanese prints, rare books,
    The charming winner who takes all for the game’s sake,
    Is now disciplined, changed and wrung into a man.
    For war’s sake, in six months, this can be