Ere then the music of the
dawn
From me had long since surged
away;
And in the disillusioned day
Of chill mid-life I plodded
on.
Anon a fuller music thrilled
My world with meaning undertones,
That elegized our vanished
ones,
And told how Lethe’s
banks are filled
With wordless calm, and wistful
rest,
And sweet large silence, solemn
sleep,
And brooding shadows cool
and deep,
And grand oblivions, undistressed.
No more ’twas “Lethe
rolling doom,”
But Lethe calling, “Come
to me,
And wash away all memory
And taint of what precedes
the tomb;
And know the changeless afterthought,
Half guessed, half named from
age to age,
Wherein I quench the flame
and rage
And sorrow with which life
is fraught.”
III.
The Love that speaks in word
and kiss,
That dyes the cheek and fires
the eye,
Through surface signs of shallow
bliss
That, quickly born, may quickly
die;
Sweet, sweet are these to
man and woman;
Who thinks them poor is less
than human.
But I do know a quavering
tone,
And I do know lack-lustre
eyes,
Behind the which, dumb and
alone,
A stronger Love his labour
plies:
He cannot sing or dance or
toy—
He works and sighs for other’s
joy.
In gloom he tends the growth
of food,
While others joy in sun and
flowers:
None knows the passion of
his mood
Save they who know what bitter
hours
Are his whose heart, alive
to beauty,
Yet dies to it and lives for
duty.
IV.
Revoke Not.
Long is it since they ceased
to look on light,
To thrill with hope in our
fond human way.
Why grudge them rest in their
sweet ancient night,
Ungrieved,
if never gay,
Eased
from Life’s sorry day?
Is it because at times when
storms subside
Through which thou oarest
Life’s ill-fitted bark,
Dreams rise, from sounds of
lapping of the tide,
To
veil the daylight stark,
Its
anguish and its cark?
What was their joy here?
Absence of great pain?
Some music in lamentings of
the wind?
The mystic whispers of the
dripping rain?
Sad
yearnings toward their kind?
Ruth
for old loves that pined?
For these would’st thou
revoke their flawless rest?
Restore hope unfulfilled which
they knew here?
Oh! well they fare, safe sheltered
in that nest
Of
silence, far from fear,
Their
memory not yet sere.
Take thou no joy in any passing
dream
Of revocation from their stainless
state!
Love them: haste on,
till thou to others seem
As
these to thee—their mate,
A
waning name, a date!