Were as warmth and sweet singing And strength to my roots; And the lives of my children made perfect with freedom of soul were my fruits. A FORSAKEN GARDEN In a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland, At the sea-down's edge between windward and lee, Walled round with rocks as an inland island, The ghost of a garden fronts the sea. A girdle of brushwood and thorn encloses The steep square slope of the blossomless bed Where the weeds that grew green from the graves of its roses Now lie dead. The fields fall southward, abrupt and broken, Would a ghost not rise at the strange guest's hand? The dense hard passage is blind and stifled That crawls by a track none turn to climb To the strait waste place that the years have rifled Not a flower to be prest of the foot that falls not; As the heart of a dead man the seed-plots are dry; From the thicket of thorns whence the nightingale calls not, Could she call, there were never a rose to reply. Rings but the note of a sea-bird's song; The sun burns sere and the rain dishevels In a round where life seems barren as death. Here there was laughing of old, there was weeping, Haply, of lovers none ever will know, Whose eyes went seaward a hundred sleeping Years ago. Heart handfast in heart as they stood, "Look thither," Did he whisper? "Look forth from the flowers to the sea; For the foam-flowers endure when the rose-blossoms wither, And men that love lightly may die-but we?" And the same wind sang and the same waves whitened, And or ever the garden's last petals were shed, In the lips that had whispered, the eyes that had lightened, Love was dead. Or they loved their life through, and then went whither? And were one to the end-but what end who knows? Love deep as the sea as a rose must wither, As the rose-red seaweed that mocks the rose. They are loveless now as the grass above them All are at one now, roses and lovers, Not known of the cliffs and the fields and the sea. Not a breath of the time that has been hovers In the air now soft with a summer to be. Not a breath shall there sweeten the seasons hereafter Of the flowers or the lovers that laugh now or weep, When as they that are free now of weeping and laughter We shall sleep. Here death may deal not again for ever; Here change may come not till all change end. From the graves they have made they shall rise up never, Who have left nought living to ravage and rend. Earth, stones, and thorns of the wild ground growing, When the sun and the rain live, these shall be ; Till a last wind's breath upon all these blowing Roll the sea. Till the slow sea rise and the sheer cliff crumble, Here now in his triumph where all things falter, Death lies dead. M WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT Born 1840 ΤΟ ΜΑΝΟΝ COMPARING HER TO A FALCON Brave as a falcon and as merciless, With bright eyes watching still the world, thy prey, I saw thee pass in thy lone majesty, Untamed, unmated, high above the press. The dull crowd gazed at thee. It could not guess Or read in thy mute face the soul which lay I dare not love thee quite. A little while And thou shalt sail back heavenwards. Woe is me! |