n self-importance and to-do.
Perhaps we missed the highest reaches of high art;
Love we missed not, and the laughter,
Seeing both before and after--
Life was such a serious business at the start!

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.