Introducing Irony (Version 2)

<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</SPAN></span> <h2 class="nobreak">WHEN SPIRITS SPEAK OF LIFE</h2> <blockquote> <p class="drop-cap">T<i>HREE spirits sit upon a low stone wall placed on the top of a hill. Their figures are gray, with human outlines, and their faces are those of a boy, a woman, and an old man. Light is greeting intimations of evening. The wall, the hill, and the figures exist only to the spirits who have created them.</i></p> </blockquote> <div class="poetry-container"> <div class="poetry"> <div class="stanza"> <div class="verse"><i>First Spirit</i></div> <div class="indent">We have made a wall</div> <div class="indent">And take it gravely.</div> </div> <div class="stanza"> <div class="verse"><i>Second Spirit</i></div> <div class="indent">The pensive vagary</div> <div class="indent">That led us to return to earth</div> <div class="indent">Welcomes these pretty illusions.</div> <div class="indent">Stone wall, hill, and evening</div> <div class="indent">Become the touch of spice</div> <div class="indent">Precious to our weariness.</div> </div> <div class="stanza"> <div class="verse"><i>Third Spirit</i></div> <div class="indent">The animated brevity</div> <div class="indent">Of this world is captivating!</div> <div class="indent">We have journeyed inward</div> <div class="indent">To the ever-distant center of life,</div> <div class="indent">Where language is a universe</div> <div class="indent">Seething with variations,</div> <div class="indent">And form becomes the changing warmth</div> <div class="indent">Of wrestling influences;</div> <div class="indent">Where motion is the plunging light of thoughts</div> <div class="indent">Dying upon each other.</div> </div> <div class="stanza"> <div class="verse"><i>First Spirit</i></div> <div class="indent">We find an incredulous pleasure</div> <div class="indent">In changing from violent influences</div> <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</SPAN></span> <div class="indent">To breath that is mutilated with outlines.</div> <div class="indent">With a subtle suspicion, we greet</div> <div class="indent">The tiny fables of our hands and feet.</div> <div class="indent">We take the little blindness of eyes</div> <div class="indent">To reassure ourselves</div> <div class="indent">That the fables will not vanish.</div> <div class="indent">Humorously we trade</div> <div class="indent">Languages, like one who gives a plateau</div> <div class="indent">For a drop of old liquor!</div> </div> <div class="stanza"> <div class="verse"><i>Second Spirit</i></div> <div class="indent">Once we were germs of thought</div> <div class="indent">Squirming under elastic disguises&mdash;</div> <div class="indent">The bank-clerk inscribing tombstones;</div> <div class="indent">The poet playing surgeon to his heart;</div> <div class="indent">The cardinal starving his flesh.</div> <div class="indent">Our bodies were images made by thought</div> <div class="indent">And symbolizing the pain of its birth.</div> <div class="indent">Murder, love, and theft</div> <div class="indent">Were only struggling experiments</div> <div class="indent">Made by germs of thought emerging to form.</div> </div> <div class="stanza"> <div class="verse"><i>Third Spirit</i></div> <div class="indent">What men call mysticism</div> <div class="indent">Is the lull in which their germ</div> <div class="indent">Of thought compensates itself</div> <div class="indent">By dreaming of a future form.</div> <div class="indent">But when the struggle is resumed,</div> <div class="indent">It often derides its inactivity,</div> <div class="indent">Scorning the brilliant trance of its exhaustion!</div> </div> <div class="stanza"> <div class="verse"><i>First Spirit</i></div> <div class="indent">And now, three tired spirits,</div> <div class="indent">Seeking a weird trinket of the past,</div> <div class="indent">Have slipped into a replica of birth.</div> </div> <p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</SPAN></span></p> <div class="stanza"> <div class="verse"><i>Second Spirit</i></div> <div class="indent">Because the gliding search of our life</div> <div class="indent">Is lacking in one quality, amusement,</div> <div class="indent">We shall often return</div> <div class="indent">To evenings, men, and walls of stone.</div> </div></div> </div> <hr class="chap" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />