| Arthur Quiller-Couch, comp. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. 1922. | | | | From ‘A Dead March’ | | By William Cosmo Monkhouse (1840–1901) |
| | | PLAY me a march lowtoned and slow—a march for a silent tread, | |
| Fit for the wandering feet of one who dreams of the silent dead, | |
| Lonely, between the bones below and the souls that are overhead. | |
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| Here for awhile they smiled and sang, alive in the interspace; | |
| Here with the grass beneath the foot, and the stars above the face, | 5 |
| Now are their feet beneath the grass, and whither has flown their grace? | |
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| Who shall assure us whence they come or tell us the way they go? | |
| Verily, life with them was joy, and now they have left us, woe; | |
| Once they were not, and now they are not, and this is the sum we know…. | |
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| Why do we mourn the days that go—for the same sun shines each day, | 10 |
| Ever a spring her primrose hath, and ever a May her may— | |
| Sweet as the rose that died last year, is the rose that is born to-day. | |
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| Do we not too return, we men, as ever the round earth whirls? | |
| Never a head is dimm’d with gray, but another is sunn’d with curls, | |
| She was a girl and he was a boy, but yet there are boys and girls. | 15 |
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| Ah, but alas for the smile of smiles that never but one face wore! | |
| Ah for the voice that has flown away like a bird to an unseen shore! | |
| Ah for the face—the flower of flowers—that blossoms on earth no more! | | | | |
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