Poems

At rest!  Hard by the margin of that sea

Whose sounds are mingled with his noble verse,

Now lies the shell that never more will house

The fine, strong spirit of my gifted friend.

Yea, he who flashed upon us suddenly,

A shining soul with syllables of fire,

Who sang the first great songs these lands can claim

To be their own; the one who did not seem

To know what royal place awaited him

Within the Temple of the Beautiful,

Has passed away; and we who knew him, sit

Aghast in darkness, dumb with that great grief,

Whose stature yet we cannot comprehend;

While over yonder churchyard, hearsed with pines,

The night-wind sings its immemorial hymn,

And sobs above a newly-covered grave.

The bard, the scholar, and the man who lived

That frank, that open-hearted life which keeps

The splendid fire of English chivalry

From dying out; the one who never wronged

A fellow-man; the faithful friend who judged

The many, anxious to be loved of him,

By what he saw, and not by what he heard,

As lesser spirits do; the brave great soul

That never told a lie, or turned aside

To fly from danger; he, I say, was one

Of that bright company this sin-stained world

Can ill afford to lose.

                         They did not know,

The hundreds who had read his sturdy verse,

And revelled over ringing major notes,

The mournful meaning of the undersong

Which runs through all he wrote, and often takes

The deep autumnal, half-prophetic tone

Of forest winds in March; nor did they think

That on that healthy-hearted man there lay

The wild specific curse which seems to cling

For ever to the Poet's twofold life!

To Adam Lindsay Gordon, I who laid

Two years ago on Lionel Michael's grave

A tender leaf of my regard; yea I,

Who culled a garland from the flowers of song

To place where Harpur sleeps; I, left alone,

The sad disciple of a shining band

Now gone! to Adam Lindsay Gordon's name

I dedicate these lines; and if 'tis true

That, past the darkness of the grave, the soul

Becomes omniscient, then the bard may stoop

From his high seat to take the offering,

And read it with a sigh for human friends,

In human bonds, and gray with human griefs.

And having wove and proffered this poor wreath,

I stand to-day as lone as he who saw

At nightfall through the glimmering moony mists,

The last of Arthur on the wailing mere,

And strained in vain to hear the going voice.