No growth of moor or coppice,
No heather-flower or vine,
But bloomless buds of poppies,
Green grapes of Proserpine,
Pale beds of blowing rushes,
Where no leaf blooms or blushes
Save this whereout she crushes
For dead men deadly wine.
Pale, without name or number,
In fruitless fields of corn,
They bow themselves and slumber
All night till light is born;
And like a soul belated,
In hell and heaven unmated,
By cloud and mist abated
Comes out of darkness morn.
Though one were strong as seven,
He too with death shall dwell,
Nor wake with wings in heaven,
Nor weep for pains in hell;
Though one were fair as roses,
His beauty clouds and closes
And well though love reposes,
In the end it is not well.
Pale, beyond porch and portal,
Crowned with calm leaves she stands,
Who gathers all things mortal
With cold immortal hands;
Her languid lips are sweeter
Than love's who fears to greet her, To men that mix and meet her From many times and lands.
She waits for each and other,
She waits for all men born;
Forgets the earth her mother,
The life of fruits and corn;
And spring and seed and swallow
Take wing for her and follow
Where summer song rings hollow,
And flowers are put to scorn,
There go the loves that wither,
The old loves with wearier wings;
And all dead years draw thither,
And all disastrous things;
Dead dreams of days forsaken,
Blind buds that snows have shaken,
Wild leaves that winds have taken,
Red strays of ruined springs.
We are not sure of sorrow,
And joy was never sure;
To-day will die to-morrow :
Time stoops to no man's lure;
And love, grown faint and fretful,
With lips but half regretful,
Sighs, and with eyes forgetful,
Weeps that no loves endure.
From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives for ever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to the sea.
There star nor sun shall waken,
Nor any change of light:
Nor sound of waters shaken,
Nor any sound or sight:
Nor wintry leaves nor vernal,
Nor days nor things diurnal ;
Only the sleep eternal,
In an eternal night.
Before the beginning of years
There came to the making of man. Time, with a gift of tears;
Grief, with a glass that ran; Pleasure, with pain for leaven ; Summer, with flowers that fell Remembrance fallen from heaven, And madness risen from hell ; Strength without hands to smite; Love that endures for a breath; Night, the shadow of light,
And life, the shadow of death,
And the high gods took in hand
Fire and the falling of tears; And a measure of sliding sand
From under the feet of the years; And froth and drift from the sea; And dust of the labouring earth; And bodies of things to be
In the houses of death and birth; And wrought with weeping and laughter, And fashioned with loathing and love, With life before and after,
And death beneath and above,
For a day, and a night, and a morrow,
That his strength might endure for a span
With travail and heavy sorrow,
The holy spirit of man.
From the winds of the North and the South,
They gathered as unto strife ; '
They breathed upon his mouth,
They filled his body with life;
Eye-sight and speech they wrought
For the veils of the soul therein ;
A time for labour and thought,
A time to serve and to sin.
They gave him light in his ways,
And love, and a space for delight,
And beauty, and length of days,
And night, and sleep in the night.
His speech is a burning fire;
With his lips he travaileth;
In his heart is a blank desire;
In his eyes foreknowledge of death. He weaves and is clothed with derision; Sows, and he shall not reap;
His life is a watch or a vision
Between a sleep and a sleep.
ON A BIRTHDAY
(LORD ABERDARE's)
What shall be written of the man Who through life's mingled hopes and fears
Touches to-day our little span
Of seventy years.
Who, with force undiminished still,
A Nestor stands among his peers,
Full of youth's fire and dauntless will
At seventy years.
Who knows no creeping chill of age,
But, rich in all which life endears,
Keeps still the patriot's noble rage
Through seventy years.
The form unbent, the flashing eye,
The curious lore, the wit that cheers,
The scorn of wrong which can defy
His seventy years;
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