 | Poems and Sonnets |  |
41
ONCE!
I
When we grow old shall we forget, I wonder,The bloom and delicate odour of our youth?
Will years that are to be divide in sunder
The achieved and the as yet unconquered truth?
Will cheeks all pale with eld and worn and shrunken
Remember the sweet flush that once they wore,
And limbs that totter, as a man reels drunken,
Be mindful of the weight that once they wore
So lightly? Sad to me the thought of growing
Towards the withering withered autumn time,
For autumn roses lose the art of blowing,
The only true rose is the rose of prime,
And what a rose is that, the rose of youth,
No words of poet compass all its truth!
42
II
If this be so, my brothers, let us sing,Yea, let us raise our voices while we can,
And join our numbers to the birds of spring;
Our life is short, for but a little span
We see the sunshine, then we face the winter,
And though we shiver, we in our sore need,
Never, although we blow it till it splinter,
Will music echo from a wintry reed;
But something is it but once to have spoken,
And wrung from out our hearts a broken cry,
A cry towards Beauty—to have given token
Once how we love her, once before we die,
And if we can but die upon her breast
Breathing her loveliness we may find rest.
43
III
Something it is to have found in some slight measureA voice, a gift of speech, before we die,
Yea, should we die now yet we've had the pleasure
Of breathing out our souls in one long sigh
Towards the lips of Beauty; this, my brothers,
While life abides in veins of ours we do,
As timid children cry for absent mothers,
We cry for her, we know that she is true;
Though all else fail us Beauty has been; never
Can we forget the vision we have seen,
Weak as a babe is Death's arm bonds to sever,
He cannot change a kiss that once has been,
He cannot move its image from the lips
Though thrice in his cold stream a soul he dips.
44
IV
Therefore we triumph—even in our sorrow—For if we vanish Beauty yet abides,
And if our song is blotted out to-morrow
Our Queen for ever through the planet rides,
Yea, if our name be not rememberèd
And no man mourn us, She it may be bears
In memory these singers who are dead,
Their vainly sought for crowns she wins and wears;
And so it should be; let us raise our voices
And beat upon our hearts till each one rings,
What matters agony if she rejoices,
Or loss of self, if only some one sings,
What matters anything if she our Queen
Lives on, and her sweet face our eyes have seen?
45
V
What we have seen no soul can take away,What we have known, is open to no hand
To rob us of, we too have had our day
And sailed the seas, and traversed lengths of land
In search of satisfaction, and our sorrow
Is when we fear the Beauty of the Whole
Is not as we would have it—but we borrow
In some sort consolation for our soul
By falling back upon the fact that certain
It is that eyes of ours have Beauty seen,
If o'er her form has fallen again the curtain
'Tis none the less true that she once has been,
That we with our eyes, yea, these eyes of ours,
Have seen her home and fairyland of flowers.
46
VI
What has been may be yet again—for othersAt all events, if for ourselves no more;
We pass the wonder on towards our brothers
Who have wandered further forward on the shore
Of Man's Development; let these men find her,
And raise their voices loud, and sing her fame,
But let us know to whom we have resigned her,
Our Goddess—if they are worthy of her name;
Let these, the poets of the future, finish
The work we have tried, and trying, left undone;
By not a jot their fame would we diminish,
By not a ray the splendour of their sun,
Only let some one say the things we see,
And these things see with clearer sight than we.
| Poems and Sonnets | |