Nor to the morning stars gave ears attent,
That you, indeed, might ever dare to be
With other praise than immortality
Unworthily content.

Not while a boy still whistles on the earth,
Not while a single human heart beats true,

Not while Love lasts and Honour, and the Brave,
Has earth a grave,

O well-beloved, for you!

Richard Le Gallienne.

TO THE BELOVED DEAD

A Lament

[First printed in "Preludes. By A. C. Thompson. 1875."]

Beloved, thou art like a tune that idle fingers
Play on a window-pane.

The time is there, the form of music lingers;
But O thou sweetest strain,

Where is thy soul? Thou liest i' the wind and rain.

Even as to him who plays that idle air,

It seems a melody,

For his own soul is full of it, so, my Fair,
Dead, thou dost live in me,
And all this lonely soul is full of thee.

Thou song of songs!-not music as before
Unto the outward ear;

My spirit sings thee inly evermore,

Thy falls with tear on tear.

I fail for thee, thou art too sweet, too dear.

Thou silent song, thou ever voiceless rhyme,
Is there no pulse to move thee

At windy dawn, with a wild heart beating time,
And falling tears above thee,

O music stifled from the ears that love thee?

Oh, for a strain of thee from outer air!
Soul wearies soul, I find.

Of thee, thee, thee, I am mournfully aware,
-Contained in one poor mind

Who wert in tune and time to every wind.

Poor grave, poor lost beloved! but I burn
For some more vast To be.

As he that played that secret tune may turn
And strike it on a lyre triumphantly,
I wait some future, all a lyre for thee.

Alice Meynell.

GEIST'S GRAVE

[First printed in the Fortnightly Review, Jan. 1881. ]

Four years!-and didst thou stay above
The ground, which hides thee now, but four?
And all that life, and all that love,

Were crowded, Geist! into no more?

Only four years those winning ways,

Which make me for thy presence yearn,
Call'd us to pet thee or to praise,
Dear little friend! at every turn?

That loving heart, that patient soul,
Had they indeed no longer span,

To run their course, and reach their goal,
And read their homily to man?

That liquid, melancholy eye,

From whose pathetic, soul-fed springs
Seem'd surging the Virgilian cry,*
The sense of tears in mortal things—

That steadfast, mournful strain, consoled
By spirits gloriously gay,

And temper of heroic mould—

What, was four years their whole short day?

Yes, only four !—and not the course

Of all the centuries yet to come,
And not the infinite resource

Of Nature, with her countless sum

Of figures, with her fulness vast
Of new creation evermore,
Can ever quite repeat the past,
Or just thy little self restore.

Stern law of every mortal lot!

Which man, proud man, finds hard to bear,
And builds himself I know not what

Of second life I know not where.

But thou, when struck thine hour to go,
On us, who stood despondent by,

A meek last glance of love didst throw,
And humbly lay thee down to die.

Yet would we keep thee in our heart—
Would fix our favourite on the scene,
Nor let thee utterly depart

And be as if thou ne'er hadst been.

And so there rise these lines of verse

On lips that rarely form them now;
While to each other we rehearse:
Such ways, such arts, such looks hadst thou!

* Sunt lacrimae rerum!

We stroke thy broad brown paws again,
We bid thee to thy vacant chair,
We greet thee by the window-pane,
We hear thy scuffle on the stair.

We see the flaps of thy large ears
Quick raised to ask which way we go;
Crossing the frozen lake, appears
Thy small black figure on the snow!

Nor to us only art thou dear

Who mourn thee in thine English home;
Thou hast thine absent master's tear,
Dropt by the far Australian foam.

Thy memory lasts both here and there,
And thou shalt live as long as we.
And after that-thou dost not care!
In us was all the world to thee.

Yet, fondly zealous for thy fame,
Even to a date beyond our own
We strive to carry down thy name,
By mounded turf, and graven stone.

We lay thee, close within our reach,
Here, where the grass is smooth and warm,
Between the holly and the beech,

Where oft we watch'd thy couchant form,

Asleep, yet lending half an ear

To travellers on the Portsmouth road;—
There build we thee, O guardian dear,
Mark'd with a stone, thy last abode !

Then some, who through this garden pass,
When we too, like thyself, are clay,
Shall see thy grave upon the grass,

And stop before the stone, and say:

People who lived here long ago
Did by this stone, it seems, intend
To name for future times to know

The dachs-hound, Geist, their little friend.

Matthew Arnold,

1822-1888.

ON A DEAD CHILD

[From "The Shorter Poems of Robert Bridges. 1890."]

Perfect little body, without fault or stain on thee,
With promise of strength and manhood full and fair!
Though cold and stark and bare,

The bloom and the charm of life doth awhile remain on thee.

Thy mother's treasure wert thou;-alas! no longer
To visit her heart with wondrous joy: to be

Thy father's pride;-ah, he

Must gather his faith together, and his strength make stronger.

To me, as I move thee now in the last duty,

Dost thou with a turn or gesture anon respond :

Startling my fancy fond

With a chance attitude of the head, a freak of beauty.

Thy hand clasps, as 'twas wont, my finger, and holds it: But the grasp is the clasp of Death, heartbreaking and stiff;

Yet feels to my hand as if

'Twas still thy will, thy pleasure and trust that enfolds it.

So I lay thee there, thy sunken eyelids closing,

Go lie thou there in thy coffin, thy last little bed !— Propping thy wise, sad head,

Thy firm, pale hands across thy chest disposing.