Studies in Song, A Century of Roundels, Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets, The Heptalogia, Etc | Page 8

that man's lot?Could neither mar nor spot?Like these false lights are not, being heavenly true.
Not like these dying lights?Of worlds whose glory smites?The passage of the nights?Through heaven's blind prison:?Not like their souls who see,?If thought fly far and free,?No heavenlier heaven to be for souls rerisen.
A soul wherein love shone?Even like the sun, alone,?With fervour of its own?And splendour fed,?Made by no creeds less kind?Toward souls by none confined,?Could Death's self quench or blind, Love's self were dead.
_February 4, 1881._
FIRST AND LAST
Upon the borderlands of being,?Where life draws hardly breath?Between the lights and shadows fleeing?Fast as a word one saith,?Two flowers rejoice our eyesight, seeing?The dawns of birth and death.
Behind the babe his dawn is lying?Half risen with notes of mirth?From all the winds about it flying?Through new-born heaven and earth:?Before bright age his day for dying?Dawns equal-eyed with birth.
Equal the dews of even and dawn,?Equal the sun's eye seen?A hand's breadth risen and half withdrawn:?But no bright hour between?Brings aught so bright by stream or lawn?To noonday growths of green.
Which flower of life may smell the sweeter?To love's insensual sense,?Which fragrance move with offering meeter?His soothed omnipotence,?Being chosen as fairer or as fleeter,?Borne hither or borne hence,?Love's foiled omniscience knows not: this?Were more than all he knows?With all his lore of bale and bliss,?The choice of rose and rose,?One red as lips that touch with his,?One white as moonlit snows.
No hope is half so sweet and good,?No dream of saint or sage?So fair as these are: no dark mood?But these might best assuage;?The sweet red rose of babyhood,?The white sweet rose of age.
LINES ON THE DEATH OF EDWARD JOHN TRELAWNY
Last high star of the years whose thunder?Still men's listening remembrance hears,?Last light left of our fathers' years,?Watched with honour and hailed with wonder?Thee too then have the years borne under,?Thou too then hast regained thy peers.
Wings that warred with the winds of morning,?Storm-winds rocking the red great dawn,?Close at last, and a film is drawn?Over the eyes of the storm-bird, scorning?Now no longer the loud wind's warning,?Waves that threaten or waves that fawn.
Peers were none of thee left us living,?Peers of theirs we shall see no more.?Eight years over the full fourscore?Knew thee: now shalt thou sleep, forgiving?All griefs past of the wild world's giving,?Moored at last on the stormless shore.
Worldwide liberty's lifelong lover,?Lover no less of the strength of song,?Sea-king, swordsman, hater of wrong,?Over thy dust that the dust shall cover?Comes my song as a bird to hover,?Borne of its will as of wings along.
Cherished of thee were this brief song's brothers?Now that follows them, cherishing thee.?Over the tides and the tideless sea?Soft as a smile of the earth our mother's?Flies it faster than all those others,?First of the troop at thy tomb to be.
Memories of Greece and the mountain's hollow?Guarded alone of thy loyal sword?Hold thy name for our hearts in ward:?Yet more fain are our hearts to follow?One way now with the southward swallow?Back to the grave of the man their lord.
Heart of hearts, art thou moved not, hearing?Surely, if hearts of the dead may hear,?Whose true heart it is now draws near??Surely the sense of it thrills thee, cheering?Darkness and death with the news now nearing--?Shelley, Trelawny rejoins thee here.
ADIEUX �� MARIE STUART
I
Queen, for whose house my fathers fought,
With hopes that rose and fell,?Red star of boyhood's fiery thought,
Farewell.
They gave their lives, and I, my queen,
Have given you of my life,?Seeing your brave star burn high between
Men's strife.
The strife that lightened round their spears
Long since fell still: so long?Hardly may hope to last in years
My song.
But still through strife of time and thought
Your light on me too fell:?Queen, in whose name we sang or fought,
Farewell.
II
There beats no heart on either border
Wherethrough the north blasts blow?But keeps your memory as a warder
His beacon-fire aglow.
Long since it fired with love and wonder
Mine, for whose April age?Blithe midsummer made banquet under
The shade of Hermitage.
Soft sang the burn's blithe notes, that gather
Strength to ring true:?And air and trees and sun and heather
Remembered you.
Old border ghosts of fight or fairy
Or love or teen,?These they forgot, remembering Mary
The Queen.
III
Queen once of Scots and ever of ours
Whose sires brought forth for you?Their lives to strew your way like flowers.
Adieu.
Dead is full many a dead man's name
Who died for you this long?Time past: shall this too fare the same,
My song?
But surely, though it die or live,
Your face was worth?All that a man may think to give
On earth.
No darkness cast of years between
Can darken you:?Man's love will never bid my queen
Adieu.
IV
Love hangs like light about your name
As music round the shell:?No heart can take of you a tame
Farewell.
Yet, when your very face was seen,
Ill gifts were yours for giving:?Love gat strange guerdons of my queen
When living.
O diamond heart unflawed and clear,
The whole world's crowning jewel!?Was ever heart so deadly dear
So cruel?
Yet none for