Ill luck (Roy Campbell)

Stolen from the wonderful fleursdumal.org:
A more optimistic version.


III Luck
 
So huge a burden to support
Your courage, Sisyphus, would ask;
Well though my heart attacks its task,
Yet Art is long and Time is short.


Far from the famed memorial arch
Towards a lonely grave I come.
My heart in its funereal march
Goes beating like a muffled drum.


— Yet many a gem lies hidden still
Of whom no pick-axe, spade, or drill
The lonely secrecy invades;


And many a flower, to heal regret,
Pours forth its fragrant secret yet
Amidst the solitary shades.


— Roy Campbell, Poems of Baudelaire (New York: Pantheon Books, 1952)