Favourite Poems: The End of the Play by William Makepeace Thackeray

Today was the last lunch-time Mass of the year in University College Dublin, where I work. When the priest announced this fact, the following poem came to mind. (I seem to feel more melancholy about transcience than most people-- unless they just don't talk about it.)

I came across this poem in an anthology called The Library of World Poetry that I bought when I was seventeen. I've never read anything else by Thackeray-- whether prose or verse. But I really like this. And it has a Christmas theme, too.

I'm not saying it's a great poem, but I think it has some great verses. It has some awkward tone shifts, where solemnity is replaced by a kind of hearty grandfatherly tone. (The allusion to grizzled beards and corduroys might be my least favourite part.)

I think the first three verses are wonderful, and the last three verses are wonderful, while the ones in between are hit and miss. My very favourite lines from the poem are these:

Who misses or who wins the prize.
Go, lose or conquer as you can;
But if you fail, or if you rise,
Be each, pray God, a gentleman.

This poem has often made me teary-eyed. I hope you like it.

The End of the Play by William Makepeace Thackeray

The play is done; the curtain drops,

Slow falling to the prompter's bell:

A moment yet the actor stops,

And looks around, to say farewell.

It is an irksome word and task;

And, when he's laughed and said his say,

He shows, as he removes the mask,

A face that's anything but gay.

One word, ere yet the evening ends,

Let's close it with a parting rhyme,

And pledge a hand to all young friends,

As fits the merry Christmas time.

On life's wide scene you, too, have parts,

That Fate ere long shall bid you play;

Good night! with honest gentle hearts

A kindly greeting go alway!

Goodnight! I'd say, the griefs, the joys,

Just hinted in this mimic page,

The triumphs and defeats of boys,

Are but repeated in our age.

I'd say, your woes were not less keen,

Your hopes more vain than those of men;

Your pangs or pleasures of fifteen

At forty-five played o'er again.

I'd say, we suffer and we strive,

Not less nor more as men, than boys;

With grizzled beards at forty-five,

As erst at twelve in corduroys.

And if, in time of sacred youth,

We learned at home to love and pray,

Pray Heaven that early Love and Truth

May never wholly pass away.

And in the world, as in the school,

I'd say, how fate may change and shift;

The prize be sometimes with the fool,

The race not always to the swift.

The strong may yield, the good may fall,

The great man be a vulgar clown,

The knave be lifted over all,

The kind cast pitilessly down.

Who knows the inscrutable design?

Blessed be He who took and gave!

Why should your mother, Charles, not mine,

Be weeping at her darling's grave?

We bow to Heaven that will'd it so,

That darkly rules the fate of all,

That sends the respite or the blow,

That's free to give, or to recall.

This crowns his feast with wine and wit:

Who brought him to that mirth and state?

His betters, see, below him sit,

Or hunger hopeless at the gate.

Who bade the mud from Dives' wheel

To spurn the rags of Lazarus?

Come, brother, in that dust we'll kneel,

Confessing Heaven that ruled it thus.

So each shall mourn, in life's advance,

Dear hopes, dear friends, untimely killed;

Shall grieve for many a forfeit chance,

And longing passion unfulfilled.

Amen! whatever fate be sent,

Pray God the heart may kindly glow,

Although the head with cares be bent,

And whitened with the winter snow.

Come wealth or want, come good or ill,

Let young and old accept their part,

And bow before the Awful Will,

And bear it with an honest heart,

Who misses or who wins the prize,

Go, lose or conquer as you can;

But if you fail, or if you rise,

Be each, pray God, a gentleman.

A gentleman, or old or young!

(Bear kindly with my humble lays);

The sacred chorus first was sung

Upon the first of Christmas days:

The shepherds heard it overhead

The joyful angels raised it then:

Glory to Heaven on high, it said,

And peace on earth to gentle men.

My song, save this, is little worth;

I lay the weary pen aside,

And wish you health, and love, and mirth,

As fits the solemn Christmas-tide.

As fits the holy Christmas birth,

Be this, good friends, our carol still.

Be peace on earth, be peace on earth,

To men of gentle will.

Postscript: Having re-read this poem just now (and having been made teary-eyed by it again), two things strike me:

1) One of the strengths of the poem is its sudden transition, in the last two verses, from a sort of worldlly wisdom that might be Deistic at best, to full-blooded Christian piety. That always gets me. I'd even missed that the whole thing is a sort of play on the fact that "gentleman" might be taken to mean literally the same thing as "men of gentle will".

2) A silly point: if Thackery "lays the weary pen aside" in the second line of last verse, how does he finish the same verse? Maybe he dictated it to someone...