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Poems

By William Bell Scott. Ballads, Studies from Nature, Sonnets, etc. Illustrated by Seventeen Etchings by the Author and L. Alma Tadema

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I GO TO BE CURED AT AVILION.'
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42

I GO TO BE CURED AT AVILION.'

[_]

(To a Picture painted 1847.)

Silently, swiftly the funeral barge
Homeward bears the brave and good,
His wide pall sweeping the murmuring marge,
Flowing to the end of the world.
Kings' daughters watching round his head,
His brazen breastplate wet with blood
And tears by these kings' daughters shed,
Watching to the end of the world.
A cresset of spices and sandal-wood
Fills the wake with an odour rare;
Two swans lead dimly athwart the flood,
Lead on to the end of the world.
From the distant wold what brings the blast?
The trump's recall, the watch-fire's glare,—
Oh! let these fade into the past,
As he fares to the end of the world.

43

From the misty woods a holier sound—
For the monks are singing their evensong—
Swoons faintly o'er the harvest-ground,
As they pass to the end of the world.
From the minster where the steep roofs are,
The passing bell, that voice supreme,
Sends a farewell faintly far,
As they fade to the end of the world.
It is gone, it is closed, the last red gleam,
Darkness shuts the fiery day;
Over the windless, boatless stream
The odours and embers have died away:
They are gone to the end of the world.