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Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  Ernest Rhys

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

A Song of Happiness

Ernest Rhys

AH, Happiness:

Who called you “Earandel”?

(Winter-star, I think, that is);

And who can tell the lovely curve

By which you seem to come, then swerve

Before you reach the middle-earth?

And who is there can hold your wing,

Or bind you in your mirth,

Or win you with a least caress,

Or tear, or kiss, or anything—

Insensate Happiness?

Once I thought to have you

Fast there in a child:

All her heart she gave you,

Yet you would not stay.

Cruel, and careless,

Not half reconciled,

Pain you cannot bear;

When her yellow hair

Lay matted, every tress;

When those looks of hers,

Were no longer hers,

You went: in a day

She wept you all away.

Once I thought to give

You, plighted, holily—

No more fugitive,

Returning like the sea:

But they that share so well

Heaven must portion Hell

In their copartnery:

Care, ill fate, ill health,

Came we know not how

And broke our commonwealth.

Neither has you now.

Some wait you on the road,

Some in an open door

Look for the face you showed

Once there—no more.

You never wear the dress

You danced in yesterday;

Yet, seeming gone, you stay,

And come at no man’s call:

Yet, laid for burial,

You lift up from the dead

Your laughing, spangled head.

Yes, once I did pursue

You, unpursuable;

Loved, longed for, hoped for you—

Blue-eyed and morning brow’d.

Ah, lovely Happiness!

Now that I know you well,

I dare not speak aloud

Your fond name in a crowd;

Nor conjure you by night,

Nor pray at morning-light,

Nor count at all on you:

But, at a stroke, a breath,

After the fear of death,

Or bent beneath a load;

Yes, ragged in the dress,

And houseless on the road,

I might surprise you there.

Yes: who of us shall say

When you will come, or where?

Ask children at their play,

The leaves upon the tree,

The ships upon the sea,

Or old men who survived,

And lived, and loved, and wived.

Ask sorrow to confess

Your sweet improvidence,

And prodigal expense

And cold economy,

Ah, lovely Happiness!