 | The Sisters |  |
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DEDICATION.
I.
Between the sea-cliffs and the sea there sleepsA garden walled about with woodland, fair
As dreams that die or days that memory keeps
Alive in holier light and lovelier air
Than clothed them round long since and blessed them there
With less benignant blessing, set less fast
For seal on spirit and sense, than time has cast
For all time on the dead and deathless past.
II.
Beneath the trellised flowers the flowers that shineAnd lighten all the lustrous length of way
From terrace up to terrace bear me sign
And keep me record how no word could say
What perfect pleasure of how pure a day
A child's remembrance or a child's delight
Drank deep in dreams of, or in present sight
Exulted as the sunrise in its might.
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III.
The shadowed lawns, the shadowing pines, the waysThat wind and wander through a world of flowers,
The radiant orchard where the glad sun's gaze
Dwells, and makes most of all his happiest hours,
The field that laughs beneath the cliff that towers,
The splendour of the slumber that enthralls
With sunbright peace the world within their walls,
Are symbols yet of years that love recalls.
IV.
But scarce the sovereign symbol of the sea,That clasps about the loveliest land alive
With loveliness more wonderful, may be
Fit sign to show what radiant dreams survive
Of suns that set not with the years that drive
Like mists before the blast of dawn, but still
Through clouds and gusts of change that chafe and chill
Lift up the light that mocks their wrathful will.
V.
A light unshaken of the wind of timeThat laughs upon the thunder and the threat
Of years that thicken and of clouds that climb
To put the stars out that they see not set,
And bid sweet memory's rapturous faith forget.
But not the lightning shafts of change can slay
The life of light that dies not with the day,
The glad live past that cannot pass away.
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VI.
The many-coloured joys of dawn and noonThat lit with love a child's life and a boy's,
And kept a man's in concord and in tune
With lifelong music of memorial joys
Where thought held life and dream in equipoise,
Even now make child and boy and man seem one,
And days that dawned beneath the last year's sun
As days that even ere childhood died were done.
VII.
The sun to sport in and the cliffs to scale,The sea to clasp and wrestle with, till breath
For rapture more than weariness would fail,
All-golden gifts of dawn, whose record saith
That time nor change may turn their life to death,
Live not in loving thought alone, though there
The life they live be lovelier than they were
When clothed in present light and actual air.
VIII.
Sun, moon, and stars behold the land and seaNo less than ever lovely, bright as hope
Could hover, or as happiness can be:
Fair as of old the lawns to sunward slope,
The fields to seaward slant and close and ope:
But where of old from strong and sleepless wells
The exulting fountains fed their shapely shells,
Where light once dwelt in water, dust now dwells.
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IX.
The springs of earth may slacken, and the sunFind no more laughing lustre to relume
Where once the sunlight and the spring seemed one;
But not on heart or soul may time or doom
Cast aught of drought or lower with aught of gloom
If past and future, hope and memory, be
Ringed round about with love, fast bound and free,
As all the world is girdled with the sea.
| The Sisters | |