The Poems of Adam Lindsay Gordon | Page 6

shields that rattle,?Blades that gash and darts that pierce; --
I have done with these for ever;?By the loud resounding sea,?Where the reedy jav'lins quiver,?There is now no place for me.?Day by day our ranks diminish,?We are falling day by day;?But our sons the strife will finish,?Where man tarries man must slay.
Life, 'tis said, to all men sweet is,?Death to all must bitter be;?Wherefore thus, oh, mother Thetis!?None can baffle Jove's decree??I am ready, I am willing,?To resign my stormy life;?Weary of this long blood-spilling,?Sated with this ceaseless strife.
Shorter doom I've pictured dimly,?On a bed of crimson sand;?Fighting hard and dying grimly,?Silent lips, and striking hand.?But the toughest lives are brittle,?And the bravest and the best?Lightly fall -- it matters little;?Now I only long for rest.
I have seen enough of slaughter,?Seen Scamander's torrent red,?Seen hot blood poured out like water,?Seen the champaign heaped with dead.?Men will call me unrelenting,?Pitiless, vindictive, stern;?Few will raise a voice dissenting,?Few will better things discern.
Speak! the fires of life are reeling,?Like the wildfires on the marsh,?Was I to a friend unfeeling??Was I to a mistress harsh??Was there nought save bloodshed throbbing?In this heart and on this brow??Whisper! girl, in silence sobbing!?Dead Patroclus! answer thou!
Dry those violet orbs that glisten,?Darling, I have had my day;?Place your hand in mine and listen,?Ere the strong soul cleaves its way?Through the death mist hovering o'er me,?As the stout ship cleaves the wave,?To my fathers gone before me,?To the gods who love the brave!
Courage, we must part for certain;?Shades that sink and shades that rise,?Blending in a shroud-like curtain,?Gather o'er these weary eyes.?O'er the fields we used to roam, in?Brighter days and lighter cheer,?Gathers thus the quiet gloaming --?Now, I ween, the end is near.
For the hand that clasps your fingers,?Closing in the death-grip tight,?Scarcely feels the warmth that lingers,?Scarcely heeds the pressure light;?While the failing pulse that alters,?Changing 'neath a death chill damp,?Flickers, flutters, flags, and falters,?Feebly like a waning lamp.
Think'st thou, love, 'twill chafe my ghost in?Hades' realm, where heroes shine,?Should I hear the shepherd boasting?To his Argive concubine??Let him boast, the girlish victor,?Let him brag; not thus, I trow,?Were the laurels torn from Hector,?Not so very long ago.
Does my voice sound thick and husky??Is my hand no longer warm??Round that neck where pearls look dusky?Let me once more wind my arm;?Rest my head upon that shoulder,?Where it rested oft of yore;?Warm and white, yet seeming colder?Now than e'er it seem'd before.
'Twas the fraud of Priam's daughter,?Not the force of Priam's son,?Slew me -- ask not why I sought her,?'Twas my doom -- her work is done!?Fairer far than she, and dearer,?By a thousandfold thou art;?Come, my own one, nestle nearer,?Cheating death of half his smart.
Slowly, while your amber tresses?Shower down their golden rain,?Let me drink those last caresses,?Never to be felt again;?Yet th' Elysian halls are spacious,?Somewhere near me I may keep?Room -- who knows? -- The gods are gracious;?Lay me lower -- let me sleep!
Lower yet, my senses wander,?And my spirit seems to roll?With the tide of swift Scamander?Rushing to a viewless goal.?In my ears, like distant washing?Of the surf upon the shore,?Drones a murmur, faintly splashing,?'Tis the splash of Charon's oar.
Lower yet, my own Briseis,?Denser shadows veil the light;?Hush, what is to be, to be is,?Close my eyes, and say good-night.?Lightly lay your red lips, kissing,?On this cold mouth, while your thumbs?Lie on these cold eyelids pressing --?Pallas! thus thy soldier comes!
Gone
In Collins-street standeth a statue tall -- *?A statue tall on a pillar of stone,?Telling its story, to great and small,?Of the dust reclaimed from the sand waste lone.?Weary and wasted, and worn and wan,?Feeble and faint, and languid and low,?He lay on the desert a dying man,?Who has gone, my friends, where we all must go.
There are perils by land, and perils by water,?Short, I ween, are the obsequies?Of the landsman lost, but they may be shorter?With the mariner lost in the trackless seas;?And well for him when the timbers start,?And the stout ship reels and settles below,?Who goes to his doom with as bold a heart?As that dead man gone where we all must go.
Man is stubborn his rights to yield,?And redder than dews at eventide?Are the dews of battle, shed on the field,?By a nation's wrath or a despot's pride;?But few who have heard their death-knell roll,?From the cannon's lips where they faced the foe,?Have fallen as stout and steady of soul?As that dead man gone where we all must go.
Traverse yon spacious burial-ground,?Many are sleeping soundly there,?Who pass'd with mourners standing around,?Kindred and friends, and children fair;?Did he envy such ending? 'twere hard to say;?Had he cause to envy such ending? no;?Can the spirit feel for the senseless clay?When it once has gone where we all must go?
What matters the sand or the whitening chalk,?The blighted herbage, the black'ning log,?The crooked