Life is the shade that clouds her thought, As Death's the eclipse of man's.

Time seems but as a bitter thing
Remembered from of yore:

Yet ah (she thinks) her song she 'll sing
When Time's long reign is o'er.

Erstwhiles she bends alow to hear
What the swift water sings,
The torrent running darkly clear
With secrets of all things.

And then she smiles a strange sad smile And lets her harp lie long;

The death-waves oft may rise the while,
She greets them with no song.

Few ever cross that dreary moor,
Few see that flower-crowned head;
But whoso knows that wild song's lure
Knoweth that he is dead.

FROM "SOSPIRI DI ROMA"

SUSURRO

BREATH o' the grass,
Ripple of wandering wind,
Murmur of tremulous leaves :
A moonbeam moving white
Like a ghost across the plain :
A shadow on the road:
And high up, high,

From the cypress-bough,
A long sweet melancholy note.
Silence.

And the topmost spray
Of the cypress-bough is still
As a wavelet in a pool:
The road lies duskily bare :
The plain is a misty gloom:
Still are the tremulous leaves;
Scarce a last ripple of wind,
Scarce a breath i' the grass.
Hush the tired wind sleeps:
Is it the wind's breath, or
Breath o' the grass

The brazen-throated clarion blows

Across the Pathan's reedy fen, And the high steeps of Indian snows Shake to the tread of armèd men.

And many an Afghan chief, who lies Beneath his cool pomegranate-trees, Clutches his sword in fierce surmise

When on the mountain-side he sees

The fleet-foot Marri scout, who comes
To tell how he hath heard afar
The measured roll of English drums
Beat at the gates of Kandahar.

For southern wind and east wind meet Where, girt and crowned by sword and fire,

England with bare and bloody feet

Climbs the steep road of wide empire.

O lonely Himalayan height,

Gray pillar of the Indian sky,
Where saw'st thou last in clanging fight
Our winged dogs of Victory?

The almond groves of Samarcand,
Bokhara, where red lilies blow,
And Oxus, by whose yellow sand
The grave white-turbaned merchants go ;

And on from thence to Ispahan,

The gilded garden of the sun, Whence the long dusty caravan Brings cedar and vermilion ;

And that dread city of Cabool

Set at the mountain's scarpèd feet, Whose marble tanks are ever full

With water for the noonday heat,

Where through the narrow straight Bazaar A little maid Circassian

Is led, a present from the Czar

Unto some old and bearded khan,

Here have our wild war-eagles flown, And flapped wide wings in fiery fight; But the sad dove, that sits alone

In England - she hath no delight.

In vain the laughing girl will lean

To greet her love with love-lit eyes: Down in some treacherous black ravine, Clutching his flag, the dead boy lies.

And many a moon and sun will see

The lingering wistful children wait To climb upon their father's knee ;

And in each house made desolate

Pale women who have lost their lord
Will kiss the relics of the slain-
Some tarnished epaulette-some sword-
Poor toys to soothe such anguished pain

For not in quiet English fields

Are these, our brothers, lain to rest, Where we might deck their broken shields With all the flowers the dead love best.

For some are by the Delhi walls,

And many in the Afghan land, And many where the Ganges falls Through seven mouths of shifting sand.

And some in Russian waters lie,
And others in the seas which are
The portals to the East, or by

The wind-swept heights of Trafalgar.

O wandering graves! O restless sleep!
O silence of the sunless day!
O still ravine! O stormy deep!

Give up your prey! Give up your prey!

And those whose wounds are never healed,
Whose weary race is never won,
O Cromwell's England! must thou yield
For every inch of ground a son ?

Go! crown with thorns thy gold-crowned head,

Change thy glad song to song of pain; Wind and wild wave have got thy dead,

And will not yield them back again.

Wave and wild wind and foreign shore

Possess the flower of English landLips that thy lips shall kiss no more,

Hands that shall never clasp thy hand.

What profit now that we have bound
The whole round world with nets of gold,
If hidden in our heart is found

The care that groweth never old?

What profit that our galleys ride,
Pine-forest like, on every main ?
Ruin and wreck are at our side,
Grim warders of the House of pain.