The Toast of Despair

We have cried⁠—and the Gods are silent;
  We have trusted⁠—and been betrayed;
We have loved⁠—and the fruit was ashes;
  We have given⁠—the gift was weighed.

We know that the heavens are empty,
  That friendship and love are names;
That truth is an ashen cinder,
  The end of life’s burnt-out flames.

Vainly and long have we waited,
  Through the night of the human roar,
For a single song on the harp of Hope,
  Or a ray from a day-lit shore.

Songs aye come floating, marvelous sweet,
  And bow-dyed flashes gleam;
But the sweets are Lies, and the weary feet
  Run after a marsh-light beam.

In the hour of our need the song departs,
  And the sea-moans of sorrow swell;
The siren mocks with a gurgling laugh
  That is drowned in the deep death-knell.

The light we chased with our stumbling feet
  As the goal of happier years,
Swings high and low and vanishes⁠—
  The bow-dyes were of our tears.

God is a lie, and Faith is a lie,
  And a tenfold lie is Love;
Life is a problem without a why,
  And never a thing to prove.

It adds, and subtracts, and multiplies,
  And divides without aim or end;
Its answers all false, though false-named true⁠—
  Wife, husband, lover, friend.

We know it now, and we care no more;
  What matters life or death?
We tiny insects emerge from earth,
  Suffer, and yield our breath.

Like ants we crawl on our brief sand-hill,
  Dreaming of “mighty things,”⁠—
Lo, they crunch, like shells in the ocean’s wrath,
  In the rush of Time’s awful wings.

The sun smiles gold, and the planets white,
  And a billion stars smile, still;
Yet, fierce as we, each wheels towards death,
  And cannot stay his will.

Then build, ye fools, your mighty things,
  That Time shall set at naught;
Grow warm with the song the sweet Lie sings,
  And the false bow your tears have wrought.

For us, a truce to Gods, loves, and hopes,
  And a pledge to fire and wave;
A swifter whirl to the dance of death,
  And a loud huzza for the Grave!