The fields fall southward, abrupt and broken, Would a ghost not rise at the strange guest's hand? 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 The rocks are left when he wastes the plain. Not a flower to be prest of the foot that falls not; Rings but the note of a sea-bird's song; The sun burns sere and the rain dishevels Only the wind here hovers and revels In a round where life seems barren as death, 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 the same wind sang and the same waves whitened, In the lips that had whispered, the eyes that had lightened, 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? They are loveless now as the grass above them 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 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, Here now in his triumph where all things falter, A WASTED VIGIL. Couldst thou not watch with me one hour? Behold, What, not one hour? for star by star the night Lo, far in heaven the web of night undone, Sunbeam by sunbeam creeps from line to line, Last year, a brief while since, an age ago, Old moons, and last year's flowers, and last year's snows O dust and ashes, once found fair to see! O dust and ashes, once thought sweet to smell! O sea-drift blown from windward back to lee! The old year's dead hands are full of their dead flowers, Couldst thou not watch with me? Could two days live again of that dead year, Nay, those two lovers are not anywhere; Half false, half fair, all feeble, be my verse As a new moon above spent stars thou wast; Couldst thou not watch one hour, though I watch three? What of the night? The night is full, the tide 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 Grief, with a glass that ran; And life, the shadow of death. And the high gods took in hand From under the feet of the years; In the houses of death and of birth; With life before and after And death beneath and above, |