The Poetical Works of John Payne :: :: University of Virginia Library

FRIEND, whom I loved in those few years and fleeting
The envious fates, which hound all things that be
From death to birth, appointed thee and me
To be together in the nether air
Of this our world of care,
Swift severance and brief and seldom meeting,
I cry to thee with one last word of greeting,
Across the darkness and the unknown sea.

With one last word I cry to thee, my brother,
One word of love and memory and grief,
That on thy grave, even as an autumn leaf
Fallen from the tree of my sad soul, all sere
With winter drawing near,
May lie, for lack of rose or lys or other
Bloom of the Spring or Summer, that our mother
Hath ta'en from me, to fill her funeral sheaf,—

Our mother Death; for thou too knewst of sadness,
Even in the brief sweet season of thy Spring;
Ay, and the stroke of thine upmounting wing,
Thus early pointing to the eternal height,
Even in its callowest flight,
Bore thee far up above men's careless gladness
Into those realms of lone, yet glorious madness,
Where all God's poets suffer, see and sing.

309

I cry into the dark with lamentation,
A cry of grief and love-longing and pain
For lack of that rich heart and teeming brain,
Which, had not envious Fate denied, were fain
To soar to such a strain
As should have gladdened folk in many a nation
And made men's hearts flower full with jubilation,
Even as the roses in the summer rain:

Yea, and regret for him my friend departed,
For solace lost to me and friendly cheer
And sympathy that made the world less drear,
Regret and memory and bitter dole
For that bright noble soul,
Swift-spirited, yet true and tender-hearted,
With whom full many a joy and pain I parted,
In that brief season he was with us here.

Ah, what is left, from Death's supreme surrender,
Of that bright wit, to all fair ends attuned,
That vaulting thought, which soared nor ever swooned
Nor drooped its pinions in the ethereal air
Of noble dreams and fair?
Only for us, to whom no prayers can render
Thy presence or thy heart so true and tender,
Memory abides, to solace and to wound.

Thou shalt not be of those whom Time effaces,
Whilst yet the mould is moist above their head,
Whose memories fade and pass and all is said;
Nay, for us all, who loved thee and who love,
Shining life's fret above,
Thy thought shall throne it in our hearts' high places,
Till Death blot past and present from our faces;
Thou shalt not be of the forgotten dead.

310

Thy face in many a page of mystic poet
Shall haunt me and thy voice in many a strain
Of strange sad music, to whose weird refrain
Our souls made answer with so whole a might
Of delicate delight
We grudged well-nigh that any else should know it,
Should bear its frail fair seed abroad and sow it,
To wither on the general heart and brain.

Thy speech, with all its high and generous passion
For noble things, its scorn of all untruth,
And all the dainty blossom of thy youth,
Thy youth oft wiser than my riper age,
Shall on the picturing page
Of memory itself anew refashion
And live, though time on thee took no compassion
And Death on us thy lovers had no ruth.

What though no power on earth avail to move thee
To sight or speech of any mother's son,
Thee, that art shut from sight of moon and sun?
For me, thy high sweet spirit, like a flower,
In this memorial hour,
Pierces the grass-grown earth that lies above thee;
Thou knewst I loved thee and thou knowst I love thee;
And in that knowledge still our souls are one.

And if thy life's untimely ended story,
Thy life so thick with many an early bloom
And seed of blooms yet brighter, hold no room,
For very ratheness, in the inconstant ken
Of quick-forgetting men,
Yet, for our hearts, though Time himself grow hoary,
The lily of love, if not the rose of glory,
Shall flower and fade not on thy timeless tomb.