We’ve lost nothing worth the keeping—­do you think? 
    You are just as slim and elfish,
    And I’ve grown a world less selfish;
  We look back on life together—­and we wink. 
  Over all those old misgivings of the heart,
    Growing pains of love and lover;
    Life’s fun begins, its fevers over—­
  Life was such a serious business at the start!

  Garners full, life’s grain and chaff we have sifted;
    Youth went by in idle tasting,
    Now we drink the cup, unhasting,
  Spill not a drop, brimful and high uplifted;
  And we watch now, calm and fearless, the years depart,
    Knowing nothing can now sever
    Two that life made one forever—­
  Life was such a serious business at the start!

  BALLADE OF READING BAD BOOKS

  O sad-eyed man who yonder sits,
    Face in a book from morn till night,
  Who, though the world should go to bits,
    Pores on right through the waning light;
    O is it sorrow or delight
  That holds you, though the sun has set? 
    “I read,” he said, “what these fools write,
  Not to remember—­but forget.”

  “Man drinks or gambles, woman knits,
    To put their sorrow out of sight,
  From folly unto folly flits
    The weary mind, or wrong or right;
    My melancholy taketh flight
  Reading the worst books I can get,
    The worst—­yet best! such is my plight—­
  Not to remember—­but forget.”

  “’Tis not alone the immortal wits,
    The lords of language, pens of might,
  Past masters of the word that fits
    In their mosaic true and bright,
    That aid us in our mortal fight,
  And heal us of our wild regret,
    But books that humbler pens indite,
  Not to remember—­but forget.”

  ENVOI

  “O Prince, ’tis but the neophyte
    Who scorns this humble novelette
  You watch me reading, un-contrite—­
    Not to remember—­but forget.”

  BALLADE OF THE MAKING OF SONGS

  Bees make their honey out of coloured flowers,
    Through the June day, with all its beam and scent,
  Heather of breezy hills, and idle bowers,
    Brushing soft doors of every blossoming tent,
    Filling gold thighs in drowsy ravishment,
  Pillaging vines on the hot garden wall,
    Taking of each small bloom its little rent—­
  Poets must make their honey out of gall.

  Singers, not so this craven life of ours,
    Our honey out of bitter herbs is blent;
  The songs that fall as soft as April showers
    Came of the whips and scorns of chastisement,
    From smitten lips and hearts in sorrow bent,
  Distilled of blood and wormwood are they all—­
    Idly you heard, indifferent what they meant: 
  Poets must make their honey out of gall.