O ageless nonpareil of stars
That shinest through a mist of cloud,
O light beyond the prison bars
Remote, unwavering, and proud;
Fortunate star and happy light,
Ye benison the gloom of night.
All hail, unfailing eye and hand,
All hail, all hail, unsilenced voice,
That makest dead men understand,
The very dead in graves rejoice:
Whose utterance, writ in ancient books,
Shall always live, for him that looks.
Many as leaves from autumn trees
The years shall flutter from on high,
And with their multiple decease
The souls of men shall fall and die,
Yet, while the empires turn to dust,
You shall live on, because you must.
O seven times happy he that dies
After the splendid harvest-tide,
When strong barns shield from winter skies
The grain that's rightly stored inside:
There death shall scatter no more tears
Than o'er the falling of the years:
Aye, happy seven times is he
Who enters not the silent doors
Before his time, but tenderly
Death beckons unto him, because
There's rest within for weary feet
Now all the journey is complete.
"So we lay down the Pen"
_So_ we lay down the pen,
So we forbear the building of the rime,
And bid our hearts be steel for times and a time
Till ends the strife, and then,
When the New Age is verily begun,
God grant that we may do the things undone.
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_Printed by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury._