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To Oscar Browning
To feed the soul through gilded bars
Fain are the fond, and fain the kind;
But where it listeth blows the wind
And storms on undiscovered stars.
Fain are the fond, and fain the kind;
But where it listeth blows the wind
And storms on undiscovered stars.
Oh! chanced it in some alien world,
Befell it in some far-off age,
Our shallop took her pilgrimage
Where Thames' pale current coiled and curled?
Befell it in some far-off age,
Our shallop took her pilgrimage
Where Thames' pale current coiled and curled?
When floating on,—the man, the boy,—
By Eton's elms and Windsor's towers,
We sowed the sweet unconscious hours
Whose blossom is remembered joy!
By Eton's elms and Windsor's towers,
We sowed the sweet unconscious hours
Whose blossom is remembered joy!
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Though drifted, since that evening fled,
A lifetime from those isles and weirs,
Through dim amazement of the years
I hold a bright, unbroken thread!
A lifetime from those isles and weirs,
Through dim amazement of the years
I hold a bright, unbroken thread!
Your sympathy alone was clue
To labour's faintly-glimmering end,
And though your faith outran me, Friend,
I dedicate my work to you.
To labour's faintly-glimmering end,
And though your faith outran me, Friend,
I dedicate my work to you.
Far distant now are Windsor's pile
And Eton's elms; yet on we float;
And hark! I hear the waves that moat
The silence of Avilion's Isle!
And Eton's elms; yet on we float;
And hark! I hear the waves that moat
The silence of Avilion's Isle!
March, 1897.
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