The Poetical Works of George Barlow :: :: University of Virginia Library

Thou changest never
Though men change ever,
Yea, veer as waves of the shifting tides;
Our seasons pass,
We wither as grass
That lies burnt brown on the mountain's sides;
But thou remainest
And death disdainest,—
Thy firm foot over the centuries strides.

II

When Rome was young
Thy lips in it sung,
The Grecian hill-sides caught from thee
Their rose-red light
Of joy; in the night
Of unknown eras thou wast, and the sea
Has known thee, O Lord,
And its music has poured
Forth for thee since ever it came to be.

104

III

Thou art in the bowers
Of memory, the flowers
The long years gather and treasure and keep:
In first love's tender
And infinite splendour,
O infinite God, thine eyes too weep:
And thou dost delight
In the calm of the night
When lovers upon thy soft breast sleep.

IV

Not one white rose
Without thee blows,
Thou art in the meadows that smile in the morn;
The long grey hills
Thy presence fills,
And the roar of the breakers is thy strong scorn;
And summer divine
Is surely thine,
And all its scents at thy word are born.

105

V

To-day we sing to you,
Our swift songs cling to you,
O world of blossoms we soon shall leave.
But what of to-morrow?
Will it bring sorrow?
Will some for our passing sigh once and grieve?
A singer to-day
Like a bird on a spray
Clings to the world's branch; will it receive?

VI

Will it receive him,
Sadden or leave him,—
He for a day sings, only a day;
Others shall follow,
Never Apollo
Hath not a song-word potent to say;
But what world takes them
As this forsakes them,
The singers whom this world's gods betray?

106

VII

We pass through the flowers,
World, of your bowers,
And some we gather and some disdain;
We pluck in your valleys
The flower-wreath that tallies
Best with the song-flowers born in our strain;
And then we fold
Our plumelets of gold,
Or of grey, and quit you; our songs remain.

VIII

But oh whither we
Depart, to what sea
With strange dark waves, what garden, what bower,
Who knows or can say?
What summer-sweet day
Awaits us, or wintry companionless hour?
What guerdon to win?
What joys gathered in?
What rose of new passion, unspeakable flower?

107

IX

Are there women as white
In the bowers of the night
Of death as in rose-hung bowers of the day?
Are there faces as fair
In that desolate air
Where the wings of the hours hang sodden and grey?
Are there mouths that can kiss?
Is there infinite bliss
Of love, or doth all love vanish away?

X

No soul can reply:
From that mystical sky
Come but faint murmurs, no clear voice rings
Downward in answer,
And but a romancer
Seems each one who doubtful or arrogant brings
Word from that far land,
Weirder than star-land,
Whence throbs all music on monstrous wings.

108

XI

For music is death,
And God, and the breath
Of flowers who make fragrant the death they defy;
The lips of the Lord
Through its cadences poured
In it thunder and laugh and reward and reply;
In it seas of the speech
Of God on the beach
Of time plunge downward from fathomless sky.

XII

But all else changes
As time's foot ranges
Pitiless, ceaseless, over our plains;
His barren relentless
Blossomless scentless
Finger the date of our death retains;
And lo! as we sing
A sudden soft wing,
Death's, darkens the chamber and hushed are our strains.

1880.