Poems & Ballads Volume III Part 10

Dead air, dead fire, dead shapes and shadows, telling Time nought; Man gives them sense and soul by song, and dwelling In thought.

In human thought their being endures, their power Abides: Else were their life a thing that each light hour Derides.

The years live, work, sigh, smile, and die, with all They cherish; The soul endures, though dreams that fed it fall And perish.

IV

In human thought have all things habitation; Our days Laugh, lower, and lighten past, and find no station That stays.

But thought and faith are mightier things than time Can wrong, Made splendid once with speech, or made sublime By song.

Remembrance, though the tide of change that rolls Wax h.o.a.ry, Gives earth and heaven, for song's sake and the soul's, Their glory.

_July 16, 1885._

THE RECALL

Return, they cry, ere yet your day Set, and the sky grow stern: Return, strayed souls, while yet ye may Return.

But heavens beyond us yearn; Yea, heights of heaven above the sway Of stars that eyes discern.

The soul whose wings from sh.o.r.eward stray Makes toward her viewless bourne Though trustless faith and unfaith say, Return.

BY TWILIGHT

If we dream that desire of the distance above us Should be fettered by fear of the shadows that seem, If we wake, to be nought, but to hate or to love us If we dream,

Night sinks on the soul, and the stars as they gleam Speak menace or mourning, with tongues to reprove us That we deemed of them better than terror may deem.

But if hope may not lure us, if fear may not move us, Thought lightens the darkness wherein the supreme Pure presence of death shall a.s.sure us, and prove us If we dream.

A BABY'S EPITAPH

April made me: winter laid me here away asleep.

Bright as Maytime was my daytime; night is soft and deep: Though the morrow bring forth sorrow, well are ye that weep.

Ye that held me dear beheld me not a twelvemonth long: All the while ye saw me smile, ye knew not whence the song Came that made me smile, and laid me here, and wrought you wrong.

Angels, calling from your brawling world one undefiled, Homeward bade me, and forbade me here to rest beguiled: Here I sleep not: pa.s.s, and weep not here upon your child.

ON THE DEATH OF SIR HENRY TAYLOR

Fourscore and five times has the gradual year Risen and fulfilled its days of youth and eld Since first the child's eyes opening first beheld Light, who now leaves behind to help us here Light shed from song as starlight from a sphere Serene as summer; song whose charm compelled The sovereign soul made flesh in Artevelde To stand august before us and austere, Half sad with mortal knowledge, all sublime With trust that takes no taint from change or time, Trust in man's might of manhood. Strong and sage, Clothed round with reverence of remembering hearts, He, twin-born with our nigh departing age, Into the light of peace and fame departs.

IN MEMORY OF JOHN WILLIAM INCHBOLD

Farewell: how should not such as thou fare well, Though we fare ill that love thee, and that live, And know, whate'er the days wherein we dwell May give us, thee again they will not give?

Peace, rest, and sleep are all we know of death, And all we dream of comfort: yet for thee, Whose breath of life was bright and strenuous breath, We think the change is other than we see.

The seal of sleep set on thine eyes to-day Surely can seal not up the keen swift light That lit them once for ever. Night can slay None save the children of the womb of night.

The fire that burns up dawn to bring forth noon Was father of thy spirit: how shouldst thou Die as they die for whom the sun and moon Are silent? Thee the darkness holds not now:

Them, while they looked upon the light, and deemed That life was theirs for living in the sun, The darkness held in bondage: and they dreamed, Who knew not that such life as theirs was none.

To thee the sun spake, and the morning sang Notes deep and clear as life or heaven: the sea That sounds for them but wild waste music rang Notes that were lost not when they rang for thee.

The mountains clothed with light and night and change, The lakes alive with wind and cloud and sun, Made answer, by constraint sublime and strange, To the ardent hand that bade thy will be done.

We may not bid the mountains mourn, the sea That lived and lightened from thine hand again Moan, as of old would men that mourned as we A man beloved, a man elect of men,

A man that loved them. Vain, divine and vain, The dream that touched with thoughts or tears of ours The spirit of sense that lives in sun and rain, Sings out in birds, and breathes and fades in flowers.

Not for our joy they live, and for our grief They die not. Though thine eye be closed, thine hand Powerless as mine to paint them, not a leaf In English woods or glades of Switzerland

Falls earlier now, fades faster. All our love Moves not our mother's changeless heart, who gives A little light to eyes and stars above, A little life to each man's heart that lives.

A little life to heaven and earth and sea, To stars and souls revealed of night and day, And change, the one thing changeless: yet shall she Cease too, perchance, and perish. Who shall say?

Our mother Nature, dark and sweet as sleep, And strange as life and strong as death, holds fast, Even as she holds our hearts alive, the deep Dumb secret of her first-born births and last.

But this, we know, shall cease not till the strife Of nights and days and fears and hopes find end; This, through the brief eternities of life, Endures, and calls from death a living friend;

The love made strong with knowledge, whence confirmed The whole soul takes a.s.surance, and the past (So by time's measure, not by memory's, termed) Lives present life, and mingles first with last.

I, now long since thy guest of many days, Who found thy hearth a brother's, and with thee Tracked in and out the lines of rolling bays And banks and gulfs and reaches of the sea--