VANITY

Be assured, the Dragon is not dead

But once more from the pools of peace

Shall rear his fabulous green head.

The flowers of innocence shall cease

And like a harp the wind shall roar

And the clouds shake an angry fleece.

'Here, here is certitude,' you swore,

'Below this lightning-blasted tree.

Where once it struck, it strikes no more.

'Two lovers in one house agree.

The roof is tight, the walls unshaken.

As now, so must it always be.'

Such prophecies of joy awaken

The toad who dreams away the past

Under your hearth-stone, light forsaken,

Who knows that certitude at last

Must melt away in vanity--

No gate is fast, no door is fast--

That thunder bursts from the blue sky,

That gardens of the mind fall waste,

That fountains of the heart run dry.

[From The Welchman's Hose (1925)]