(“My name is also named ‘Played Out.’”)
When first we heard Rossetti sing,
We twanged the melancholy lyre,
We sang like this, like anything,
When first we heard Rossetti sing.
And all our song was faded Spring,
And dead delight and dark desire,
When first we heard Rossetti sing,
We twanged the melancholy lyre.
(And this is how we twanged it)—
The New Orpheus to his Eurydice.
WHY wilt thou woo, ah, strange Eurydice,
A languid laurell’d Orpheus in the shades,
For here is company of shadowy maids,
Hero, and Helen and Psamathoë:
And life is like the blossom on the tree,
And never tumult of the world invades,
The low light wanes and waxes, flowers and fades,
And sleep is sweet, and dreams suffice for me;
“Go back, and seek the sunlight,” as of old,
The wise ghost-mother of Odysseus said,
Here am I half content, and scarce a-cold,
But one light fits the living, one the dead;
Good-bye, be glad, forget! thou canst not hold
In thy kind arms, alas! this powerless head.
When first we heard Rossetti sing,
We also wrote this kind of thing!