Last Poems | Page 4

For pay and medals, name and rank,
Things that he has not found,
He hove the Cross to heaven and sank
The pole-star underground.

And now he does not even see
Signs of the nadir roll
At night over the ground where he
Is buried with the pole.
XVIII
The rain, it streams on stone and hillock,
The boot clings to the clay.
Since all is done that’s due and right

Let’s home; and now, my lad, good-night,
For I must turn away.
Good-night, my lad, for nought’s eternal;
No league of ours, for sure.
Tomorrow I shall miss you less,
And
ache of heart and heaviness
Are things that time should cure.
Over the hill the highway marches
And what’s beyond is wide:
Oh soon enough will pine to nought

Remembrance and the faithful thought
That sits the grave beside.
The skies, they are not always raining
Nor grey the twelvemonth through;
And I shall meet good days and
mirth,
And range the lovely lands of earth
With friends no worse than you.
But oh, my man, the house is fallen

That none can build again;
My man, how full of joy and woe
Your
mother bore you years ago
To-night to lie in the rain.
XIX
In midnights of November,
When Dead Man’s Fair is nigh,
And danger in the valley,
And anger in the sky,
Around the huddling homesteads
The leafless timber roars,
And the dead call the dying
And finger at the doors.
Oh, yonder faltering fingers
Are hands I used to hold;
Their false companion drowses
And leaves them in the cold.
Oh, to the bed of ocean,
To Africk and to Ind,
I will arise and follow
Along the rainy wind.
The night goes out and under
With all its train forlorn;
Hues in the east assemble
And cocks crow up the morn.
The living are the living

And dead the dead will stay,
And I will sort with comrades
That face the beam of day.
XX
The night is freezing fast,
To-morrow comes December;
And winterfalls of old
Are with me from the past;
And chiefly I remember
How Dick would hate the cold.
Fall, winter, fall; for he,
Prompt hand and headpiece clever,
Has woven a winter robe,
And made of earth and sea
His overcoat for ever,
And wears the turning globe.
XXI
The fairies break their dances
And leave the printed lawn,
And up from India glances
The silver sail of dawn.
The candles burn their sockets,
The blinds let through the day,
The young man feels his pockets
And wonders what’s to pay.

XXII
The sloe was lost in flower,
The April elm was dim;
That was the lover’s hour,
The hour for lies and him.
If thorns are all the bower,
If north winds freeze the fir,
Why, ‘tis another’s hour,
The hour for truth and her.
XXIII
In the morning, in the morning,
In the happy field of hay,
Oh they looked at one another
By the light of day.
In the blue and silver morning
On the haycock as they lay,
Oh they looked at one another
And they looked away.
XXIV
EPITHALAMIUM
He is here, Urania’s son,
Hymen come from Helicon;
God that
glads the lover’s heart,
He is here to join and part.
So the
groomsman quits your side
And the bridegroom seeks the bride:

Friend and comrade yield you o’er
To her that hardly loves you more.
Now the sun his skyward beam
Has tilted from the Ocean stream.


Light the Indies, laggard sun:
Happy bridegroom, day is done,
And
the star from Œta’s steep
Calls to bed but not to sleep.
Happy bridegroom, Hesper brings
All desired and timely things.

All whom morning sends to roam,
Hesper loves to lead them home.

Home return who him behold,
Child to mother, sheep to fold,

Bird to nest from wandering wide:
Happy bridegroom, seek your
bride.
Pour it out, the golden cup
Given and guarded, brimming up,
Safe
through jostling markets borne
And the thicket of the thorn;
Folly
spurned and danger past,
Pour it to the god at last.
Now, to smother noise and light,
Is stolen abroad the wildering night,

And the blotting shades confuse
Path and meadow full of dews;

And the high heavens, that all control,
Turn in silence round the pole.

Catch the starry beams they shed
Prospering the marriage bed,

And breed the land that reared your prime
Sons to stay the rot of time.

All is quiet, no alarms;
Nothing fear of nightly harms.
Safe you
sleep on guarded ground,
And in silent circle round
The thoughts of
friends keep watch and ward,
Harnessed angels, hand on sword.
XXV
THE ORACLES
‘Tis mute, the word they went to hear on high Dodona mountain
When winds were in the oakenshaws and all the cauldrons tolled, And
mute’s the midland navel-stone beside the singing fountain,
And echoes list to silence now where gods told lies of old.
I took my question to the shrine that has not ceased from speaking,
The heart within, that tells the truth and tells it twice as plain; And from

the cave of oracles I heard the priestess shrieking
That she and I should