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The fields fall southward, abrupt and broken,
To the low last edge of the long lone land.
If a step should sound or a word be spoken,

Would a ghost not rise at the strange guest's hand?
So long have the grey bare walks lain guestless,

Through branches and briers if a man make way, He shall find no life but the sea-wind's, restless Night and day.

The dense hard passage is blind and stifled

That crawls by a track none turn to climb
To the strait waste place that the years have rifled
Of all but the thorns that are touched not of time.
The thorns he spares when the rose is taken;

The rocks are left when he wastes the plain.
The wind that wanders, the weeds wind-shaken,
These remain.

Not a flower to be prest of the foot that falls not;
As the heart of a dead man the seed-plots are dry;
From the thicket of thorns whence the nightingale calls not,
Could she call, there were never a rose to reply.
Over the meadows that blossom and wither

Rings but the note of a sea-bird's song;
Only the sun and the rain come hither
All year long.

The sun burns sere and the rain dishevels
One gaunt bleak blossom of scentless breath.

Only the wind here hovers and revels

In a round where life seems barren as death,
Here there was laughing of old, there was weeping,
Haply, of lovers none ever will know,
Whose eyes went seaward a hundred sleeping

Years ago.

Heart handfast in heart as they stood, 'Look thither,'

Did he whisper? 'Look forth from the flowers to the sea;

For the foam-flowers endure when the rose-blossoms wither,
And men that love lightly may die-but we?'

And the same wind sang and the same waves whitened,
And or ever the garden's last petals were shed,

In the lips that had whispered, the eyes that had lightened,
Love was dead.

Or they loved their life through, and then went whither? And were one to the end-but what end who knows? Love deep as the sea as a rose must wither,

As the rose-red seaweed that mocks the rose.

Shall the dead take thought for the dead to love them?
What love was ever as deep as a grave?

They are loveless now as the grass above them
Or the wave.

All are at one now, roses and lovers,

Not known of the cliffs and the fields and the sea. Not a breath of the time that has been hovers

In the air now soft with a summer to be.

Not a breath shall there sweeten the seasons hereafter
Of the flowers or the lovers that laugh now or weep,
When as they that are free now of weeping and laughter
We shall sleep.

Here death may deal not again for ever;

Here change may come not till all change end. From the graves they have made they shall rise up never, Who have left nought living to ravage and rend. Earth, stones, and thorns of the wild ground growing, While the sun and the rain live, these shall be; Till a last wind's breath upon all these blowing

Roll the sea.

Till the slow sea rise and the sheer cliff crumble,
Till terrace and meadow the deep gulfs drink,
Till the strength of the waves of the high tides humble
The fields that lessen, the rocks that shrink,

Here now in his triumph where all things falter,
Stretched out on the spoils that his own hand spread,
As a god self-slain on his own strange altar,
Death lies dead.

A WASTED VIGIL.

Couldst thou not watch with me one hour? Behold,
Dawn skims the sea with flying feet of gold,
With sudden feet that graze the gradual sea;
Couldst thou not watch with me?

What, not one hour? for star by star the night
Falls, and her thousands world by world take flight;
They die, and day survives, and what of thee?
Couldst thou not watch with me?

Lo, far in heaven the web of night undone,
And on the sudden sea the gradual sun;
Wave to wave answers, tree responds to tree;
Couldst thou not watch with me?

Sunbeam by sunbeam creeps from line to line,
Foam by foam quickens on the brightening brine;
Sail by sail passes, flower by flower gets free;
Couldst thou not watch with me?

Last year, a brief while since, an age ago,
A whole year past, with bud and bloom and snow,
O moon that wast in heaven, what friends were we!
Couldst thou not watch with me?

Old moons, and last year's flowers, and last year's snows
Who now saith to thee, moon? or who saith, rose?

O dust and ashes, once found fair to see!
Couldst thou not watch with me?

O dust and ashes, once thought sweet to smell!
With me it is not, is it with thee well?

O sea-drift blown from windward back to lee!
Couldst thou not watch with me?

The old year's dead hands are full of their dead flowers,
The old days are full of dead old loves of ours,
Born as a rose, and briefer born than she;

Couldst thou not watch with me?

Could two days live again of that dead year,
One would say, seeking us and passing here,
Were is she? and one answering, Were is he?
Couldst thou not watch with me?

Nay, those two lovers are not anywhere;
If we were they, none knows us what we were,
Nor aught of all their barren grief and glee.
Couldst thou not watch with me?

Half false, half fair, all feeble, be my verse
Upon thee not for blessing nor for curse
For some must stand, and some must fall or flee;
Couldst thou not watch with me?

As a new moon above spent stars thou wast;
But stars endure after the moon is past.

Couldst thou not watch one hour, though I watch three?
Couldst thou not watch with me?

What of the night? The night is full, the tide
Storms inland, the most ancient rocks divide;
Yet some endure, and bow nor head nor knee;
Couldst thou not watch with me?

Since thou art not as these are, go thy ways; Thou hast no part in all my nights and days. Lie still, sleep on, be glad-as such things be; Thou couldst not watch with me.

CHORUS.

FROM "ATALANTA IN CALYDON".

Before the beginning of years,

There came to the making of man
Time, with a gift of tears;

Grief, with a glass that ran;
Pleasure, with pain for leaven:
Summer, with flowers that fell;
Remembrance fallen from heaven,
And madness risen from hell;
Strength without hands to smite;
Love that endures for a breath;
Night, the shadow of light,

And life, the shadow of death.

And the high gods took in hand
Fire, and the falling of tears,
And a measure of sliding sand

From under the feet of the years;
And froth and drift of the sea;
And dust of the labouring earth;
And bodies of things to be

In the houses of death and of birth;
And wrought with weeping and laughter,
And fashioned with loathing and love,

With life before and after

And death beneath and above,

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