1889–1892
_PROLOGUE_
_Something is dead_ . . .
_The grace of sunset solitudes_, _the march_
_Of the solitary moon_, _the pomp and power_
_Of round on round of shining soldier-stars_
_Patrolling space_, _the bounties of the sun_—
_Sovran_, _tremendous_, _unimaginable_—
_The multitudinous friendliness of the sea_,
_Possess no more—no more_.
_Something is dead_ . . .
_The Autumn rain-rot deeper and wider soaks_
_And spreads_, _the burden of Winter heavier weighs_,
_His melancholy close and closer yet_
_Cleaves_, _and those incantations of the Spring_
_That made the heart a centre of miracles_
_Grow formal_, _and the wonder-working bours_
_Arise no more—no more_.
_Something is dead_ . . .
_’Tis time to creep in close about the fire_
_And tell grey tales of what we were_, _and dream_
_Old dreams and faded_, _and as we may rejoice_
_In the young life that round us leaps and laughs_,
_A fountain in the sunshine_, _in the pride_
_Of God’s best gift that to us twain returns_,
_Dear Heart_, _no more—no more_.
I
_To_ H. B. M. W.
WHERE forlorn sunsets flare and fade
On desolate sea and lonely sand,
Out of the silence and the shade
What is the voice of strange command
Calling you still, as friend calls friend
With love that cannot brook delay,
To rise and follow the ways that wend
Over the hills and far away?
Hark in the city, street on street
A roaring reach of death and life,
Of vortices that clash and fleet
And ruin in appointed strife,
Hark to it calling, calling clear,
Calling until you cannot stay
From dearer things than your own most dear
Over the hills and far away.
Out of the sound of the ebb-and-flow,
Out of the sight of lamp and star,
It calls you where the good winds blow,
And the unchanging meadows are:
From faded hopes and hopes agleam,
It calls you, calls you night and day
Beyond the dark into the dream
Over the hills and far away
II
_To_ R. F. B.
WE are the Choice of the Will: God, when He gave the word
That called us into line, set in our hand a sword;
Set us a sword to wield none else could lift and draw,
And bade us forth to the sound of the trumpet of the Law.
East and west and north, wherever the battle grew,
As men to a feast we fared, the work of the Will to do.
Bent upon vast beginnings, bidding anarchy cease—
(Had we hacked it to the Pit, we had left it a place of peace!)—
Marching, building, sailing, pillar of cloud or fire,
Sons of the Will, we fought the fight of the Will, our sire.
Road was never so rough that we left its purpose dark;
Stark was ever the sea, but our ships were yet more stark;
We tracked the winds of the world to the steps of their very thrones;
The secret parts of the world were salted with our bones;
Till now the name of names, England, the name of might,
Flames from the austral fires to the bounds of the boreal night;
And the call of her morning drum goes in a girdle of sound,
Like the voice of the sun in song, the great globe round and round;
And the shadow of her flag, when it shouts to the mother-breeze,
Floats from shore to shore of the universal seas;
And the loneliest death is fair with a memory of her flowers,
And the end of the road to Hell with the sense of her dews and
showers!
Who says that we shall pass, or the fame of us fade and die,
While the living stars fulfil their round in the living sky?
For the sire lives in his sons, and they pay their father’s debt,
And the Lion has left a whelp wherever his claw was set;
And the Lion in his whelps, his whelps that none shall brave,
Is but less strong than Time and the great, all-whelming Grave.