University of Virginia Library

I.

Ah me! what strange relief when never more
By hill or lake or shore
The tender summer airs for us are sweet,—
When no flowers front our feet.
When the last sun has risen, the last moon set,
Then shall we not forget?
When the last laughing red mouth has been kissed,
We'll fly, and not be missed!
When the last gracious love-word has been said,
We'll seek the loveless dead
And bring them songs that found on graceless earth
Just soil enough for birth
But neither suns nor moons nor stars to shield
Their growth in fallow field
Nor love of hearers nor desire of souls
Who cluster round earth's goals.

II.

Ah! when the weary weary weary way
Is traversed and the grey
Dim breakers desolate of death's grim sea
Surge and advance and flee,
So near at last we hear their salt mouths sing,
What peace their song shall bring!
For then at last we know that no more flowers
Shall flame for us in bowers
And that love's message shall no more mislead
Nor passion's bright heart bleed
Nor feet that struggle on the temporal way
Be duped, and led astray.
The golden valleys will be full of corn
And great suns greet the morn;
The purple hills will flame with far-spread heather
In the blue solemn weather;
The woods will all be scented from the crowd
Of meadow-sweet wind-bowed;
The seas will laugh and all the breezes sing;
The black-berry copse will ring
Just as of old to merry maidens' mirth
And all the same old earth
Be veiled in May-bloom and in jocund green
And rathe flowers peep between
The enravelled foliage and close-clustered stems
With nodding diadems
And all the innumerous founts and rills and brooks
That permeate dusky nooks
Shall babble onward, and the hedge shall shine
With August eglantine
And lovers' lips shall meet,—but we shall know
No more that this is so.

III.

The weary flowers shall find us then no more
Nor the waves sound on shore;
Nor fierce desires of wayward temporal things
Then agitate our wings;
Nor mad capricious passion sweeter than
Furze-scent when it began
And far more arid than the arid sea
When once its first wild glee
Lessened,—shall reach us in that silent land
Where soon our feet shall stand.
Never shall sweet scent rouse us any more
Nor beauty round us pour
Ineffable desire and splendid grace
Of her tumultuous face
And all the urgent rapture of her wings
Whereto grey sorrow clings.
Not gold nor black nor auburn hair, nor brown,
Not one most sweet rose-crown,
Not sweetest smiling of a woman's face
Nor her most tender grace
Nor whitest bosom filled with forest-balm
Shall lift us from our calm,—
The sacred calm unending and supreme
That follows every dream,—
The terrible pure calm that holy death
Seals with her signet-breath,—
The calm whereto all we, swift spirits, go
As the years onward flow,—
The final calm that never trump shall break
Nor love's own whisper wake.

IV.

Not all the lures that lured us once shall then
Speak and be heard again:
Not summer laughter in the leafiest trees
Nor June-sweet breath of breeze
Nor June-soft flutter of foliage in the air
Nor gorse-bloom deep and rare
With subtle scent that steeps us in a dream
Wherethrough strange phantoms stream.
Nought of these things shall rouse us from our sleep;
Nor groan of thunder deep
Nor splendid red attire of autumn leaves
Whereat the love-wind grieves
Nor golden August smiling 'mid the corn
Nor crimson jocund morn
Nor village rebeck sounding o'er the plain
Nor tanned autumnal grain
Nor monstrous murmur of Decembral waves
That triumph o'er men's graves
Nor moonlit lisp of ripples as they march
'Neath the moon's silver arch
Nor splendour of the innumerable stars
And all their glowing cars
Nor blue-black inlets of the mountain-lake
Where russet rushes shake
Nor briony-berries with their flaming red
Nor campion's milk-white head
Nor gentianella pure and skiey-blue,
Heaven-exquisite in hue,—
Nor pink geraniums, nor the star-wort green
That in the trench is seen
Nor speedwell tender as the heaven's own eye
Nor tufts of grass that sigh
In the June-wind with blossom-laden crests
Nor the white lilies' breasts,—
Not one thing of these things so passing fair
Shall make us as we were
Or lift from slumber our desirous eyes
That yearn not for new skies
But only for the immitigable sleep
Endless, unbroken, deep.

V.

And shall God's heaven or gold harps rouse us then,
We wearied-out dead men,
When all these fragrant fair things cannot rouse
Or flood our narrow house
With new desire and sweet, and bring new joy
Wherewith to sport and toy?
What hope for lyres and harps in heaven, or sweet
Sound as of angels' feet,—
What can their utmost efforts pale and spent
Bring dead souls of content?
Can they rouse dead hearts when a sweet live rose
Wherein the summer glows
Had nought of power to rouse,—when woman's breath
Failed to undo our death?
Whom woman cannot wake is dead indeed
Past hope of heaven or creed,—
Him shall the utmost thunders fail to wake
Who lives not for her sake,
And all God's tremors of judgment pass him by
Who in spite of her would die.
If the red luscious mouth of woman-rose
Can lift us not, who knows
What joy can lift us or what hope can bloom
Yet, on our hopeless tomb?
Yea, she lifts not,—we are in peace at last
And all our life is passed,
Joys, sorrows, passions, splendours, all are gone,
Not one frail bud lives on,
And men forget us though they hear our song
Still, for its voice is strong,—
Hear it in sighing of the insatiate waves
And wintry wind that raves
And in the summer whisper of the leaves
Trembling round cottage-eaves
And in the heart of women too it sounds
And its live breath abounds.

VI.

But we return not: never never more
Shall all our hearts be sore
With the sheer travail and laborious care
Life gave for robe to wear;
Passion and love have done for us their best
And white hands have caressed
And rabid mouths have cursed and many have railed
And red swords have assailed
And roses have been sweet and violets blue
Bathed in translucid dew
And gardens wonderful have held us deep
Hidden in magic sleep
And tender arms have with their gracious care
Made many seasons fair
And mouths ephemeral have seduced our own
With their ephemeral tone
And lips eternal sacred and divine
Have kissed us for a sign
And on the lonely footpath we have bled
Till purple flowers and red
Sprang in our traces,—many moons have shone
And gay suns waved us on
And fields innumerable of swaying green
Upon our path been seen
And waves have tempted us with glittering blue
Seductive transient hue
And mountainous tides have foamed across our path
Terrible in white wrath
And sometimes pain hath cradled us to rest
Half with a mother's breast
And agony our very souls hath wrung,—
And through it all we've sung,—
And through it all we've struggled towards the high
Sheer unattempted sky,—
And now the strife is over and we sleep,—
And what we've planted, reap.

VII.

But who shall wake us? Shall we slumber long,
Silent, devoid of song,
Or shall we bring to lower lands a voice
Bidding dead hearts rejoice,—
A breath of England and the English seas,
A whisper of the breeze,
A message to the English harps that sleep
In deathland-valleys deep,
Bidding them know that we on earth retain
The memory of their reign
And that from earliest singer to the last
Their melodies have passed
Into the heart of England, making fair
The fountains of her air
And making strong the splendour of her seas
And vocal her great breeze
And filling all her deep proud heart with might,
Her regal eyes with light,
Her hands with valour and her face with pure
Rich joy that doth endure:
Raising her by their song above all lands
And giving with wide hands
Their great and deathless spirits for her to take,
Made deathless for her sake,—
Rendering her rose-like in the midst of free
Girdle of circling sea
And ever sweet and gracious with perfume
From their own souls' white bloom
And glorious with the mastery of their might
And with their beauty bright
And lifted by their force to lands afar
Untrodden of sun or star
Whose sacred fields alone have yet been trod
By imminent live God
Where they in lordly triumph and high state
For new dead singers wait
When these too pass and leave their country higher
For all their love and fire,
Mingling with many a mighty poet dead
And lordly vanished head
Till all the mighty choir one day complete
In deathless chorus sweet
Makes song more wave-like, England, then for thee
Even than thy choir-like sea.