A Century of Roundels Part 9

DEAD LOVE

Dead love, by treason slain, lies stark, White as a dead stark-stricken dove: None that pa.s.s by him pause to mark Dead love.

His heart, that strained and yearned and strove As toward the sundawn strives the lark, Is cold as all the old joy thereof.

Dead men, re-risen from dust, may hark When rings the trumpet blown above: It will not raise from out the dark Dead love.

DISCORD

Unreconciled by life's fleet years, that fled With changeful clang of pinions wide and wild, Though two great spirits had lived, and hence had sped Unreconciled;

Though time and change, harsh time's imperious child, That wed strange hands together, might not wed High hearts by hope's misprision once beguiled;

Faith, by the light from either's memory shed, Sees, radiant as their ends were undefiled, One goal for each--not twain among the dead Unreconciled.

CONCORD

Reconciled by death's mild hand, that giving Peace gives wisdom, not more strong than mild, Love beholds them, each without misgiving Reconciled.

Each on earth alike of earth reviled, Hated, feared, derided, and forgiving, Each alike had heaven at heart, and smiled.

Both bright names, clothed round with man's thanksgiving, s.h.i.+ne, twin stars above the storm-drifts piled, Dead and deathless, whom we saw not living Reconciled.

MOURNING

Alas my brother! the cry of the mourners of old That cried on each other, All crying aloud on the dead as the death-note rolled, Alas my brother!

As flashes of dawn that mists from an east wind smother With fold upon fold, The past years gleam that linked us one with another.

Time sunders hearts as of brethren whose eyes behold No more their mother: But a cry sounds yet from the shrine whose fires wax cold, Alas my brother!

APEROTOS EROS

Strong as death, and cruel as the grave, Clothed with cloud and tempest's blackening breath, Known of death's dread self, whom none outbrave, Strong as death,

Love, brow-bound with anguish for a wreath, Fierce with pain, a tyrant-hearted slave, Burns above a world that groans beneath.

Hath not pity power on thee to save, Love? hath power no pity? Nought he saith, Answering: blind he walks as wind or wave, Strong as death.

TO CATULLUS

My brother, my Valerius, dearest head Of all whose crowning bay-leaves crown their mother Rome, in the notes first heard of thine I read My brother.

No dust that death or time can strew may smother Love and the sense of kins.h.i.+p inly bred From loves and hates at one with one another.

To thee was Caesar's self nor dear nor dread, Song and the sea were sweeter each than other: How should I living fear to call thee dead My brother?

'INSULARUM OCELLE'

Sark, fairer than aught in the world that the lit skies cover, Laughs inly behind her cliffs, and the seafarers mark As a shrine where the sunlight serves, though the blown clouds hover, Sark.

We mourn, for love of a song that outsang the lark, That nought so lovely beholden of Sirmio's lover Made glad in Propontis the flight of his Pontic bark.

Here earth lies lordly, triumphal as heaven is above her, And splendid and strange as the sea that upbears as an ark, As a sign for the rapture of storm-spent eyes to discover, Sark.

IN SARK

Abreast and ahead of the sea is a crag's front cloven asunder With strong sea-breach and with wasting of winds whence terror is shed As a shadow of death from the wings of the darkness on waters that thunder Abreast and ahead.

At its edge is a sepulchre hollowed and hewn for a lone man's bed, Propped open with rock and agape on the sky and the sea thereunder, But roofed and walled in well from the wrath of them slept its dead.

Here might not a man drink rapture of rest, or delight above wonder, Beholding, a soul disembodied, the days and the nights that fled, With splendour and sound of the tempest around and above him and under, Abreast and ahead?

IN GUERNSEY TO THEODORE WATTS