Love's Trappist

There is a place where lute and lyre are broken,

Where scrolls are torn and on a wild wind go,

Where tablets stand wiped naked for a token,

Where laurels wither and the daisies grow.

Lo: I too join the brotherhood of silence,

I am Love's Trappist and you ask in vain,

For man through Love's gate, even as through Death's gate,

Goeth alone and comes not back again.

Yet here I pause, look back across the threshold,

Cry to my brethren, though the world be old,

Prophets and sages, questioners and doubters,

O world, old world, the best hath ne'er been told!