| 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, | 5 |
| 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 | 10 |
| Trod by no tropic feet? | |
| |
| 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, | 15 |
| 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 | 20 |
| Hither and thither, and vex and work her wrong, | |
| Blind gods that cannot spare. | |
| |
| Thou sawest, in thine old singing season, brother, | |
| Secrets and sorrows unbeheld of us: | |
| Fierce loves, and lovely leaf-buds poisonous, | 25 |
| 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 | 30 |
| Make the shut eyes of stricken spirits weep; | |
| And with each face thou sawest the shadow on each, | |
| Seeing as men sow men reap. | |
| |
| O sleepless heart and sombre soul unsleeping, | |
| That were athirst for sleep and no more life | 35 |
| 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 | 40 |
| 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? | |
| |
| It is enough; the end and the beginning | 45 |
| Are one thing to thee, who art past the end. | |
| O hand unclasp'd 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. | 50 |
| O quiet eyes wherein the light saith naught, | |
| 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. | 55 |
| |
| 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, | 60 |
| 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 | 65 |
| Where the wet hill-winds weep? | |
| |
| Hast thou found any likeness for thy vision? | |
| O gardener of strange flowers, what bud, what bloom, | |
| Hast thou found sown, what gather'd in the gloom? | |
| What of despair, of rapture, of derision, | 70 |
| What of life is there, what of ill or good? | |
| Are the fruits gray like dust or bright like blood? | |
| Does the dim ground grow any seed of ours, | |
| The faint fields quicken any terrene root, | |
| In low lands where the sun and moon are mute | 75 |
| And all the stars keep silence? Are there flowers | |
| At all, or any fruit? | |
| |
| Alas, but though my flying song flies after, | |
| O sweet strange elder singer, thy more fleet | |
| Singing, and footprints of thy fleeter feet, | 80 |
| Some dim derision of mysterious laughter | |
| From the blind tongueless warders of the dead, | |
| Some gainless glimpse of Proserpine's veil'd head, | |
| Some little sound of unregarded tears | |
| Wept by effaced unprofitable eyes, | 85 |
| And from pale mouths some cadence of dead sighs— | |
| These only, these the hearkening spirit hears, | |
| Sees only such things rise. | |
| |
| Thou art far too far for wings of words to follow, | |
| Far too far off for thought or any prayer. | 90 |
| What ails us with thee, who art wind and air? | |
| What ails us gazing where all seen is hollow? | |
| Yet with some fancy, yet with some desire, | |
| Dreams pursue death as winds a flying fire, | |
| Our dreams pursue our dead and do not find. | 95 |
| Still, and more swift than they, the thin flame flies, | |
| The low light fails us in elusive skies, | |
| Still the foil'd earnest ear is deaf, and blind | |
| Are still the eluded eyes. | |
| |
| Not thee, O never thee, in all time's changes, | 100 |
| Not thee, but this the sound of thy sad soul, | |
| The shadow of thy swift spirit, this shut scroll | |
| I lay my hand on, and not death estranges | |
| My spirit from communion of thy song— | |
| These memories and these melodies that throng | 105 |
| Veil'd porches of a Muse funereal— | |
| These I salute, these touch, these clasp and fold | |
| As though a hand were in my hand to hold, | |
| Or through mine ears a mourning musical | |
| Of many mourners roll'd. | 110 |
| |
| I among these, I also, in such station | |
| As when the pyre was charr'd, and piled the sods. | |
| And offering to the dead made, and their gods, | |
| The old mourners had, standing to make libation, | |
| I stand, and to the Gods and to the dead | 115 |
| Do reverence without prayer or praise, and shed | |
| Offering to these unknown, the gods of gloom, | |
| And what of honey and spice my seed-lands bear, | |
| And what I may of fruits in this chill'd air, | |
| And lay, Orestes-like, across the tomb | 120 |
| A curl of sever'd hair. | |
| |
| But by no hand nor any treason stricken, | |
| Not like the low-lying head of Him, the King, | |
| The flame that made of Troy a ruinous thing, | |
| Thou liest and on this dust no tears could quicken. | 125 |
| There fall no tears like theirs that all men hear | |
| Fall tear by sweet imperishable tear | |
| Down the opening leaves of holy poets' pages. | |
| Thee not Orestes, not Electra mourns; | |
| But bending us-ward with memorial urns | 130 |
| The most high Muses that fulfil all ages | |
| Weep, and our God's heart yearns. | |
| |
| For, sparing of his sacred strength, not often | |
| Among us darkling here the lord of light | |
| Makes manifest his music and his might | 135 |
| In hearts that open and in lips that soften | |
| With the soft flame and heat of songs that shine. | |
| Thy lips indeed he touch'd with bitter wine, | |
| And nourish'd them indeed with bitter bread; | |
| Yet surely from his hand thy soul's food came, | 140 |
| The fire that scarr'd thy spirit at his flame | |
| Was lighted, and thine hungering heart he fed | |
| Who feeds our hearts with fame. | |
| |
| Therefore he too now at thy soul's sunsetting, | |
| God of all suns and songs, he too bends down | 145 |
| To mix his laurel with thy cypress crown, | |
| And save thy dust from blame and from forgetting. | |
| Therefore he too, seeing all thou wert and art, | |
| Compassionate, with sad and sacred heart, | |
| Mourns thee of many his children the last dead, | 150 |
| And hollows with strange tears and alien sighs | |
| Thine unmelodious mouth and sunless eyes, | |
| And over thine irrevocable head | |
| Sheds light from the under skies. | |
| |
| And one weeps with him in the ways Lethean, | 155 |
| And stains with tears her changing bosom chill; | |
| That obscure Venus of the hollow hill, | |
| That thing transform'd which was the Cytherean, | |
| With lips that lost their Grecian laugh divine | |
| Long since, and face no more call'd Erycine— | 160 |
| A ghost, a bitter and luxurious god. | |
| Thee also with fair flesh and singing spell | |
| Did she, a sad and second prey, compel | |
| Into the footless places once more trod, | |
| And shadows hot from hell. | 165 |
| |
| And now no sacred staff shall break in blossom, | |
| No choral salutation lure to light | |
| A spirit sick with perfume and sweet night | |
| And love's tired eyes and hands and barren bosom. | |
| There is no help for these things; none to mend, | 170 |
| And none to mar; not all our songs, O friend, | |
| Will make death clear or make life durable. | |
| Howbeit with rose and ivy and wild vine | |
| And with wild notes about this dust of thine | |
| At least I fill the place where white dreams dwell | 175 |
| And wreathe an unseen shrine. | |
| |
| Sleep; and if life was bitter to thee, pardon, | |
| If sweet, give thanks; thou hast no more to live; | |
| And to give thanks is good, and to forgive. | |
| Out of the mystic and the mournful garden | 180 |
| Where all day through thine hands in barren braid | |
| Wove the sick flowers of secrecy and shade, | |
| Green buds of sorrow and sin, and remnants gray, | |
| Sweet-smelling, pale with poison, sanguine-hearted, | |
| Passions that sprang from sleep and thoughts that started, | 185 |
| Shall death not bring us all as thee one day | |
| Among the days departed? | |
| |
| For thee, O now a silent soul, my brother, | |
| Take at my hands this garland, and farewell. | |
| Thin is the leaf, and chill the wintry smell, | 190 |
| And chill the solemn earth, a fatal mother, | |
| With sadder than the Niobean womb, | |
| And in the hollow of her breasts a tomb. | |
| Content thee, howsoe'er, whose days are done; | |
| There lies not any troublous thing before, | 195 |
| Nor sight nor sound to war against thee more, | |
| For whom all winds are quiet as the sun, | |
| All waters as the shore. | |
