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Died before the Dardanelles, April, 1915
I YOU too, “superb on unreturning tides,” | |
| Pass; and the brightness dies out of the air. | |
| Our life itself seems dreamlike, waiting where | |
| The desert of no paths forever hides | |
| Your hates and longings, your revolts and prides, | 5 |
| The secret miracle that your songs declare— | |
| As these few reliques to our eager care | |
| And long delight your stricken hand confides. | |
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| Beautiful lover of beauty!—child of the sea, | |
| Sunlight, and mysteries of the evening foam! | 10 |
| Though sleep shall heal the feet too far a-roam, | |
| Are you at peace now as you longed to be?— | |
| Or beauty-hungered does your soul go free | |
| Out of the harbor of its mortal home. | |
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II It was enough, that common men had died | 15 |
| In this vast horror of the shaken world | |
| Where life’s primeval hate broadcast is hurled | |
| To crush the age’s generous youth and pride | |
| In flame and anguish; proving how we lied | |
| Who dreamed a nobler banner now unfurled | 20 |
| Over mankind—while bitter smoke-wreaths curled | |
| Up from the Moloch-lips we had denied! | |
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| But you not as this age’s sacrifice | |
| Should have gone down; you were foredoomed to be | |
| Not of the age, but of all time a light. | 25 |
| This hour has grief—too much!—but you are price | |
| That the race pays for its apostasy, | |
| Its hour of madness in the abysmal night. | |
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III Song lingered at your lips—delicate song, | |
| Whose flowing waters in the golden day | 30 |
| Bore from the hill-lands of the far-away | |
| The dews of rarer heights for which men long. | |
| But when the tawdry baseness of the throng | |
| Opposed to that fair stream its dull delay, | |
| Your words leaped skyward into stinging spray, | 35 |
| A scornful challenge to the powers of wrong. | |
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| When you sang of beauty, Beauty’s self came down, | |
| Blue-robed and shining, to the courts you laid | |
| Where the heart walks at evening, hushed and free. | |
| But when you touched the dullard and the clown, | 40 |
| The jangled keys of your tense spirit made | |
| Discords, that were your prayer to harmony. | |
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IV Clear level light across the English hills | |
| Where garden-shadows track the afternoon; | |
| Dusk under willows where a summer moon | 45 |
| Its long cascades of ghostly silver spills | |
| Down pools of silence; a refrain that fills | |
| The heart with sense of some forgotten tune; | |
| The trembling white limbs of youth’s night of June | |
| When life’s whole perfume up the wind distils: | 50 |
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| These drift out of the regions that enfold you, | |
| And from my memory almost smooth away | |
| The picture of your known and mortal face,— | |
| As though the lineaments could no longer hold you | |
| Their prisoner, nor the earthen lamp betray | 55 |
| With dust the flame that there had dwelling-place. | |
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V The song is ended, but the years have set | |
| No boundary to your memory; you have done | |
| A young man’s miracles; your dreams have won | |
| Some little of fadeless wonder from the fret | 60 |
| And torture of the days; your eyes have met | |
| The eyes of the Archangel of the Sun; | |
| And your lips cried, in brief last orison, | |
| A gleam and glory men will not forget. | |
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| The rest is silence … your smile of swift delight | 65 |
| Shall flash to ours no more, nor shall the hand | |
| Bring the heart’s greeting as you come again. | |
| Only an echo from the silent land— | |
| Only a gleam sometimes through summer rain— | |
| “A width, a shining peace under the night.” | 70 |
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