OH YOU SABBATARIANS!

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Oh you sabbatarians, methodists and puritans;
You bigots, devotees and ranters;
You formalists, pietists and fanatics,
Teetotalers and hydropots,
You thin ascetics, androgynous souls,
Chaste and epicene spirits,
Eyes blind to color, ears deaf to sound,
Fingers insensitive,
Do what you will,
Make what laws you choose—
Yet there are high spaces of rapture
Which you can never touch,
They are beyond you and hidden from you.
We leave you to the dull assemblies,
Charades, cantatas and lectures;
The civic meetings where you lie and act
And work up business;
The teas of forced conversation,
And receptions of how-de-dos,
And stereotyped smiles;
The church sociables;
And the calls your young men of clammy hands
And fetid breath
Pay to anÆmic virgins—
These are yours;
Take them—
But I tell you
In places you know not of,
We, the free spirits, the livers,
Guests at the wedding feast of life,
Drinkers of the wine made by Jesus,
Worshipers of fire and of God,
Who made the grape,
And filled the veins of His legitimate children
With ethereal flame—
We the lovers of life in unknown places
Shall taste of ancient wine,
And put flowers in golden vases,
And open precious books of song,
And look upon dreaming Buddhas,
And marble masks of genius.
We shall hear the sound of stringed instruments,
Voicing the dreams of great spirits.
We shall know the rapture of kisses
And long embraces,
And the sting of folly.
We shall entwine our arms in voluptuous sleep,
And in the misery of your denials
And your cowardice and your fears
You shall not even dream that we exist.
Unintelligible weeds! We, the blossoms of life's garden,
Flourish on the hills of variable winds—
We perish, but you never live.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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