What is the use of a sheaf of regrets?
What is the use of a garland of sighs?
Ever is Destiny trailing her nets,
A smile on her lips, and with hate in her eyes.
Heedless the spirit, beseeching, that cries!
Helpless the mortal who sorrows and frets!
What is the use of a garland of sighs?
What is the use of a sheaf of regrets?
Cast in the midst of the limitless skies,
Lost in the æons that e’en God forgets.
Merely a life-light that flashes and dies,
Merely a soul-spark that glimmers and sets—
These are the glories that “being” begets,
Granted alike to the foolish and wise—
What is the use of a sheaf of regrets?
What is the use of a garland of sighs?
Ah! but philosophy always forgets—
Writ though the sentence, and cast though the dies—
Love may fly downward from God’s parapets,
Fanning Eternity’s breath as she flies!
Groundlings awake from their squalor and rise,
Destiny then may well gather her debts—
What is the use of a garland of sighs?
What is the use of a sheaf of regrets?