Poems 1905-1908
Second Best
Day that I Have Loved
Sleeping Out: Full Moon
In Examination
Pine-Trees and the Sky: Evening
Wagner
The Vision of the Archangels
Seaside
On the Death of Smet-Smet, the Hippopotamus-Goddess
The Song of the Pilgrims
The Song of the Beasts
Failure
Ante Aram
Dawn
The Call
The Wayfarers
The Beginning
|
|
Day That I Have Loved
Tenderly, day that I have loved, I close your eyes,
And smooth your quiet brow, and fold your thin
dead hands.
The grey veils of the half-light deepen; colour dies.
I bear you, a light burden, to the shrouded
sands,
Where lies your waiting boat, by wreaths of the sea's making
Mist-garlanded, with all grey weeds of the
water crowned.
There you'll be laid, past fear of sleep or hope of waking;
And over the unmoving sea, without a sound,
Faint hands will row you outward, out beyond our sight,
Us with stretched arms and empty eyes on the
far-gleaming
And marble sand. . . .
Beyond
the shifting cold twilight,
Further than laughter goes, or tears, further
than dreaming,
There'll be no port, no dawn-lit islands! But the drear
Waste darkening, and, at length, flame ultimate
on the deep.
Oh, the last fire -- and you, unkissed, unfriended there!
Oh, the lone way's red ending, and we not there
to weep!
(We found you pale and quiet, and strangely crowned with flowers,
Lovely and secret as a child. You came with
us,
Came happily, hand in hand with the young dancing hours,
High on the downs at dawn!) Void now and tenebrous,
The grey sands curve before me. . . .
From
the inland meadows,
Fragrant of June and clover, floats the dark,
and fills
The hollow sea's dead face with little creeping shadows,
And the white silence brims the hollow of the
hills.
Close in the nest is folded every weary wing,
Hushed all the joyful voices; and we, who held
you dear,
Eastward we turn and homeward, alone, remembering . . .
Day that I loved, day that I loved, the Night
is here!
|