It is not ours to choose the stage
On which our parts are played.
It is not ours to scribe a plot
Of comedy or rage.
To measure out in detail
Life's small sorrows and delights
Is the height of all presumption
And a failure aright.


It is not ours to smile at
The small foibles of this show
Nor is it ever ours to shed the tears
That lovers ever know.
For they are for the watchers
Sitting silent in the shade,
It is for them this fatal comedy,
This spectacle is played.

For they are tomorrow's lovers,
And they are tomorrow's fiends,
Who must learn from the truths of Story
And their half-remembered dreams
How to take on the mantle bequeathed them
And to play their parts aright
To illuminate with wonders
This, our strange and endless night.