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Poems with Fables in Prose

By Frederic Herbert Trench

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In the cavern darkness where they stand
She takes the high torch from his hand
To search till she discerns
That manèd visage, trace by trace,—
The solemn-sounding mountain's base
Rough'd to a humorous savage face
Wherein the granite burns. . . .
“How sharp,” he said, “that last, last hour
Of departure's sick delay
Prints on the warm, cleft, trembling soul
The thing it takes away!

73

Stamped how imperishably clear
Your northern night dwells in me here!
In my Greek island cell
How oft I shut my eyes and smell
Your sweetbriar by the northern shore
And hear that fountain play!
Its spouted rabble of loud drops
Hangs in the evening still!
November woods becloud the turf
By the dove-house squat and chill.
All's hush; and a ragged thunder-storm
Comes up over towers and wood;
White doves beat in a throbbing swarm
Against the thunder-cloud
As though they had thy transport been—
The yielding of my flame-foot Queen!
We pace together up the sward
As they circle over the firth;
The moonfall on thy coifless hair
Makes glamour of the earth. . . .
And then, leaning on the parapet,
‘Ah!’ thou say'st, ‘before passion's voice
All, all is overset:—
But what's a madman's passion worth?’ . . .
Well, hast thou learnt it yet?
“Why, great one, never kneel to me!
We are too wise and old;
Thou hast brought back the young man's pearls
Before his heart is cold! . . .

74

Calm, calm's for all such agonies
As happened long ago!
Calm is the Earth, though from its side
A moon was torn! What woe!
Yet time hath filled the wound with salt
And solitary flow.
“We were too dream-intent and hard
To mingle each with each.
Thou hadst to be thyself—to become
Thyself the last, high, tragic song
Of this our piercèd Christendom,
Too high, too sad, for speech! . . .
Saved in some vessel we see not,
Some dark urn of the Lord,
Is shed this everlasting loss,
This waste of spirit poured.
“For me, more than I need is mine;
Labour of the hands is mine;
Content, among my lentils here,
And the obscurity divine.”