The Map of the Age

The antique tapestry depicts

The termination of two pacts,

Written down as desperate laws

For the soul's most natural lures,

One of death and one of love,

Signed with x's in the grove.

Triumphs mark the termination

Of the act in each rotation:

Love, considered one completion,

Death, of rather more duration,

Ride in chariots, each by each,

Through the thread's triumphal arch.

Love sits proudly in the lead,

That destroys us with the load

Of the heart unreconciled

To emotion beat and soiled

By faith unreciprocate

Wearing virtue's tattered coat.

This true conqueror of the man

Is aloof from any moan

That should reach him in his seat

From the multitudes that wait

At the turning of the wheels

For the turning that impales.

And behind him clacking death

Grins upon the folk beneath,

Chiding them because of lateness,

Promising the end is lightness,

And the grave Pandora's box

Opening on starry banks.

By this bony victor's car,

At the finish of his war

Go the pagan, priest and gull,

With the pander and his trull,

Followed to the body's goal

By the potentate and fool.

The philosopher may sulk,

Seeing these upon the silk,

Running moveless on the wall;

And draw tighter still the wool

Binding up his parchéd chest

From the world's Utopian dust.

For the cunning artisan

Working in the ancient sun,

Fashioned every face the same,

Save an innocence in some,

And in others blind deceit

Eager for its second sight.

Love, then, covets death's anointed,

Death desires passion's sainted ;

And, to satisfy the two,

Souls are rent and forced to go

Part beside each separate car,

Captives in the abstract war.

Still, wise nature will not let

Such dissection be our lot;

The soul, beyond the tapestry,

Is made again an entity

By death, who can best do with it

When cruel love is through with it.