University of Virginia Library

BYTIMES, from out the stillness of my days,
Grown silent, as they nigh
The darkness and the undiscovered ways,
I hear folk question why
The fountain of my songs, that once ran high
And full, is fallen dry;
Why in that concert of the fields and hills
Of poesy, that fills
Our English heaven with music never mute,
There is one broken lute,
One voiceless bird,
One linnet of the woods, whose wilding note,
Erst in the morning hours of some that heard
Held sweet, is dumb within his stricken throat,
Ere yet the glory of the noon be o'er,—
Whose song, though day still shines, is heard no more.
—They ask in very idleness nor pause
For answer; yet the cause
Who will may know:
My voice is dumb for weariness of woe.

I am no night-bird piping in the dark;
For me, as for the lark,
The sun must rise to set me on the wing:
Except hope shine on me, I cannot sing:
I cannot carol in a lightless land
Nor hymn the dawn, except it be at hand.
Love was my dayspring and my evenglow,
The sun that set my April blossoming,
That made my summer carolful; and lo!
My daystar set in darkness long ago.

My sun lies buried in a nameless tomb,
Midmost a mighty desert of the dead,
Where the great city's gloom
Lengthens its skirt of shadow overhead,
Darkening the morning and the evening-red.
There, in the narrow room,
After long pain and many a piteous day
Of hopeless waiting for the hopeless end,
Since love nor care might bend
The iron course of fore-appointed doom,
Her weary head to lay
She came, for whom my songs were sung of yore,
For whom the barrens of my life ran o'er
With lush and lavish bloom.

Since that sad day, my songs are turned to sighs;
The flowerage of my heart is all fordone:
But she, the eternal rest so hardly won,
At peace she lies
And sleeps as well, frail lover of the sun,
Beneath our English skies,
Our pallid skies of watchet-chequered dun,
As if she lay where the rose-laurels run
Adown Grenada's hillside, torrent-wise,
Or where, amidst the Andalusian vines,
The rosy gold of Seville's turrets shines.

Ah, what is left us of the dear-loved dead?
The dainty gold-fledged head,
The eyes' soft gray,
From which the dreams of childhood never fled;
The mouth's rose-campion red,
The lips, on which the faint smile sat alway,
Sad as the break of April's youngest day;
The rose-blush cheeks and forehead, garlanded
With clustering curls astray,
Like woodbind tendrils in the flush of May;
The voice, too soft for joy, too sweet for pain,
That in its blithest tone
Had yet some note of never-ceasing moan,
Some half-enchanted strain,
As of some sad embodied spirit, fain
To be set free again
From this waste world, that never was its own,
Since in some clime unknown
The airs and flames of heaven to it were blown?

These hath Time taken back to its treasury,
In other worlds, mayhap, alas! but ne'er
In this of night and day reborn to be:
Nay, all are gone and even memory
Will fade of what they were.
Might we but deem some lapse of land and sea,
Some brighter sky
Should bring these back to heart and ear and eye,
These that in death's hand lie!
Ah God, to see the daisies springing there,
Year after year, as if life ne'er should die,
And see no sign and know no reason why
Her life that was so fair,
Her soul, that was so sweet, so heavens-high,
Is faded out for e'er
Into the deserts of the abysmal air!

Could we but hope the all-engrossing earth,
That for the eternal rest
Took back her blighted beauty to its breast,
Might yet enrich our dearth
With some unknown, enchanted wonder-birth
Of blossom, brilliant as her starry eyes,
Sweet as her balmy breath,
Some flowerage of heaven defying death,
Wherein our yearning memory might retrace
The frankness of her face,
In whose bright beauty thought might recognize
The spirit-prime of her lost loveliness,
Born as it were again
In some new earth, delivered from the press
Of mortal grossness by the purge of pain,—
Or might we deem the unresponsive air,
—That bore her gentle spirit far away
And scattered it for aye
Beyond the confines of the night and day,
To all the winds of being, nor would e'er
Vouchsafe to our despair
One echo of her voice's dulcet strain,—
Should yet grow great with graciousness and bear
Some mystic birth of music strange and fair,
Some seraph-song of Paradisal bird,
Some melody of mortals never heard,
Wherein her silver speech
And the far memory of her voice might reach
Our longing ears and witness to our faith,
She was not all disfeatured by the scaith
Of unrespective death,
That something of her sweetness yet survives
In interstellar lands
Or in the sunset-calm of spirit-lives,
Nor was all scattered by the 'scape of breath!

Nay, hope is vain; in vain our lifted hands!
In vain our cryings storm the heaven's stair:
There are no ears to hearken anywhere,
No lips to speak in answer to our prayer.
The heavens are empty as the empty air;
The Gods are dead as she is dead and nought
Abides of her but thought
In one man's brain, who soon himself must go
To join the unnumbered nations that lie low
In that untravelled land where thought is none
And sight is senseless there of star and sun.

One sole man's thought against the grim array
Of Death and Fate her only hope and stay,
Her one
Frail-seeming fortalice! And yet, how slight
Soe'er it show against the iron might
Of the blind Titans of oblivion,
Methinks it shall suffice for many a day
To hinder Time's decay
From blotting out her traces; yea, despite
The myriad graves that let her from the light,
Th'innumerable throngs
That overcrowd her of the nameless dead,
Remembrance still shall blossom o'er her head
And guard her gentle memory from Time's wrongs;
For in that narrow bed
With her my heart lies buried and my songs.

If you should find the hidden violet there,
Soft'ning the smoky air
With that sad scent of hers, that seems to hold
The very soul of tears, or see the mould
Lit with the lucent gold
Of thronging primrose,—if the breeze should bear
The roses' royal breath
And lilies white,
The fair flower-angels with the heart of light,
With jessamines unite
To glorify that darkling garth of death,—
Think not these are but flowers,
The common creatures of the sun and showers:
Nay, these are no mere scions of the Spring,
No Summer's blossoming,
The tired earth's homage to the lengthening hours;
These are the secret treasures of my prime,
My hoards of love and rhyme,
Which, did she live, were songs, but, she being dead,
Are flowers above her head.

If you should marvel there to hear the lark
Sunder the morning-dark
With that shrill clarion-call of his for light,
Out of the deeps of night,
Or mark the mavis and the ousel make
Their wild free music there for April's sake,—
Nay, if some magic in the air should bring
The nightingales to sing
Her requiem who rests beneath the earth
In this grim graveyard city of her birth,
Deem not but birds are these,
But simple songsters of the woods and leas.
These are no common choristers of air,
The singing sprites of heaven's lowest stair,
That hymn the Spring and Summer everywhere;
They are the tuneful creatures of my soul,
My thoughts of joy and dole,
Which, did she live, were music wild and free,
Pageant and jubilee,
Such as had overflooded land and sea
With tides of song, but, she being dead, I gave
To glorify her grave.