Who might have chased and claspt Renown And caught her chaplet here--and there In haunts of jungle-poison"d air The flame of life went wavering down;
IX
But ere he left your fatal sh.o.r.e, And lay on that funereal boat, Dying, "Unspeakable" he wrote "Their kindness," and he wrote no more;
X
And sacred is the latest word; And now the Was, the Might-have-been, And those lone rites I have not seen, And one drear sound I have not heard,
XI
Are dreams that scarce will let me be, Not there to bid my boy farewell, When That within the coffin fell, Fell--and flash"d into the Red Sea,
XII
Beneath a hard Arabian moon And alien stars. To question, why The sons before the fathers die, Not mine! and I may meet him soon;
XIII
But while my life"s late eve endures, Nor settles into hueless gray, My memories of his briefer day Will mix with love for you and yours.
TO W. E. GLADSTONE
We move, the wheel must always move, Nor always on the plain, And if we move to such a goal As Wisdom hopes to gain, Then you that drive, and know your Craft, Will firmly hold the rein, Nor lend an ear to random cries, Or you may drive in vain, For some cry "Quick" and some cry "Slow,"
But, while the hills remain, Up hill "Too-slow" will need the whip, Down hill "Too-quick," the chain.
TO MARY BOYLE
(Dedicating "The Progress of Spring.")
I
"Spring-flowers"! While you still delay to take Your leave of Town, Our elmtree"s ruddy-hearted blossom-flake Is fluttering down.
II
Be truer to your promise. There! I heard Our cuckoo call.
Be needle to the magnet of your word, Nor wait, till all
III
Our vernal bloom from every vale and plain And garden pa.s.s, And all the gold from each laburnum chain Drop to the gra.s.s.
IV
Is memory with your Marian gone to rest, Dead with the dead?
For ere she left us, when we met, you prest My hand, and said
V
"I come with your spring-flowers." You came not, friend; My birds would sing, You heard not. Take then this spring-flower I send, This song of spring,
VI
Found yesterday--forgotten mine own rhyme By mine old self, As I shall be forgotten by old Time, Laid on the shelf--
VII
A rhyme that flower"d betwixt the whitening sloe And kingcup blaze, And more than half a hundred years ago, In rick-fire days,
VIII
When Dives loathed the times, and paced his land In fear of worse, And sanguine Lazarus felt a vacant hand Fill with _his_ purse.
IX
For lowly minds were madden"d to the height By tonguester tricks, And once--I well remember that red night When thirty ricks,
X
All flaming, made an English homestead h.e.l.l-- These hands of mine Have helpt to pa.s.s a bucket from the well Along the line,
XI
When this bare dome had not begun to gleam Thro" youthful curls, And you were then a lover"s fairy dream, His girl of girls;
XII
And you, that now are lonely, and with Grief Sit face to face, Might find a flickering glimmer of relief In change of place.