So quiet! doth the change content thee ?-Death, whither hath he taken thee?

To a world, do I think, that rights the disaster of this?

The vision of which I miss,

Who weep for the body, and wish but to warm thee and awaken thee?

Ah! little at best can all our hopes avail us

To lift this sorrow, or cheer us, when in the dark,
Unwilling, alone we embark,

And the things we have seen and have known and have heard of, fail us.

Robert Bridges.

IN A GRAVEYARD

Oliver Madox Brown

November 12, 1874

["The Coming of Love, and other Poems. 1898."]

Farewell to thee, and to our dreams farewell—
Dreams of high deeds and golden days of thine,
Where once again should Art's twin powers combine-
The painter's wizard-wand, the poet's spell!
Though death strikes free, careless of Heaven and Hell-
Careless of Man, of Love's most lovely shrine;
Yet must Man speak-must ask of Heaven a sign
That this wild world is God's, and all is well.
Last night we mourned thee, cursing eyeless Death,
Who, sparing sons of Baal and Ashtoreth,

Must needs slay thee, with all the world to slay;
But round this grave the winds of winter say:
"On earth what hath the poet? An alien breath.
Night holds the keys that ope the doors of Day."
Theodore Watts-Dunton,

LIGHT: AN EPICEDE

To Philip Bourke Marston

["Astrophel, and other poems. By Algernon Charles
Swinburne." 1894.]

Love will not weep because the seal is broken
That sealed upon a life beloved and brief
Darkness, and let but song break through for token
How deep, too far for even thy song's relief,
Slept in thy soul the secret springs of grief.

Thy song may soothe full many a soul hereafter,
As tears, if tears will come, dissolve despair ;
As here but late, with smile more bright than laughter,
Thy sweet strange yearning eyes would seem to bear
Witness that joy might cleave the clouds of care.

Two days agone, and love was one with pity

When love gave thought wings toward the glimmering goal

Where, as a shrine lit in some darkling city,

Shone soft the shrouded image of thy soul:

And now thou art healed of life; thou art healed, and whole.

Yea, two days since, all we that loved thee pitied: And now with wondering love, with shame of face, We think how foolish now, how far unfitted,

Should be from us, toward thee who hast run thy race, Pity-toward thee, who hast won the painless place; The painless world of death, yet unbeholden

Of eyes that dream what light now lightens thine And will not weep. Thought, yearning toward those olden

Dear hours that sorrow sees and sees not shine,
Bows tearless down before a flameless shrine:

A flameless altar here of life and sorrow

Quenched and consumed together. These were one, One thing for thee, as night was one with morrow And utter darkness with the sovereign sun:

And now thou seest life, sorrow, and darkness done.

And yet love yearns again to win thee hither;
Blind love, and loveless, and unworthy thee:
Here where I watch the hours of darkness wither
Here where mine eyes were glad and sad to see
Thine that could see not mine, though turned on me.
But now, if aught beyond sweet sleep lie hidden,
And sleep be sealed not fast on dead men's sight
For ever, thine hath grace for ours forbidden,

And sees us compassed round with change and night:
Yet light like thine is ours, if love be light.

Algernon Charles Swinburne,

AVE ATQUE VALE

In Memory of Charles Baudelaire

["Poems and Ballads. Second Series. By Algernon Charles Swinburne. 1878."]

Nous devrions pourtant lui porter quelques fleurs;
Les morts, les pauvres morts, ont de grandes douleurs,
Et quand Octobre souffle, émondeur des vieux arbres,
Son vent mélancolique à l'entour de leurs marbres,
Certe, ils doivent trouver les vivants bien ingrats.
"Les Fleurs du Mal."

I

Shall I strew on thee rose or rue or laurel,
Brother, on this that was the veil of thee?
Or quiet sea-flower moulded by the sea,
Or simplest growth of meadow-sweet or sorrel,
Such as the summer-sleepy Dryads weave,
Waked up by snow-soft sudden rains at eve?
Or wilt thou rather, as on earth before,

Half-faded fiery blossoms, pale with heat
And full of bitter summer, but more sweet
To thee than gleanings of a northern shore
Trod by no tropic feet?

O

II

For always thee the fervid languid glories
Allured of heavier suns in mightier skies;
Thine ears knew all the wandering watery sighs
Where the sea sobs round Lesbian promontories,
The barren kiss of piteous wave to wave

That knows not where is that Leucadian grave
Which hides too deep the supreme head of song.
Ah, salt and sterile as her kisses were,

The wild sea winds her and the green gulfs bear Hither and thither, and vex and work her wrong, Blind gods that cannot spare.

III

Thou sawest, in thine old singing season, brother,
Secrets and sorrows unbeheld of us:

Fierce loves, and lovely leaf-buds poisonous,
Bare to thy subtler eye, but for none other
Blowing by night in some unbreathed-in clime;
The hidden harvest of luxurious time,

Sin without shape, and pleasure without speech;
And where strange dreams in a tumultuous sleep
Make the shut eyes of stricken spirits weep;
And with each face thou sawest the shadow on each,
Seeing as men sow men reap.

IV

O sleepless heart and sombre soul unsleeping,
That were athirst for sleep and no more life
And no more love, for peace and no more strife!
Now the dim gods of death have in their keeping
Spirit and body and all the springs of song,
Is it well now where love can do no wrong,

Where stingless pleasure has no foam or fang
Behind the unopening closure of her lips?
Is it not well where soul from body slips
And flesh from bone divides without a pang
As dew from flower-bell drips?

:

V

It is enough; the end and the beginning
Are one thing to thee, who art past the end.
O hand unclasped of unbeholden friend,

For thee no fruits to pluck, no palms for winning,
No triumph and no labour and no lust,
Only dead yew-leaves and a little dust.
O quiet eyes wherein the light saith nought,
Whereto the day is dumb, nor any night
With obscure finger silences your sight,
Nor in your speech the sudden soul speaks thought,
Sleep, and have sleep for light.

VI

Now all strange hours and all strange loves are over,
Dreams and desires and sombre songs and sweet,
Hast thou found place at the great knees and feet
Of some pale Titan-woman like a lover,

Such as thy vision here solicited,

Under the shadow of her fair vast head,
The deep division of prodigious breasts,
The solemn slope of mighty limbs asleep,
The weight of awful tresses that still keep
The savour and shade of old-world pine-forests
Where the wet hill-winds weep?