Part 21

It is something to have loved the brightest Beauty with no hope of aught but silence for your vow: it is something to have tried to do your duty: it is something to be trying, trying now!

And, in the silent solemn hours, when your soul floats down the far faint flood of time -- to think of Earth's lovers who are ours, of her saviours saving, suffering, sublime:

And that you with THESE may be her lover, with THESE may save and suffer for her sake -- IT IS JOY TO HAVE LIVED, SO TO DISCOVER YOU'VE A LIFE YOU CAN GIVE AND SHE CAN TAKE!

Gordon's Grave

All the heat and the glow and the hush of the summer afternoon; the scent of the sweet-briar bush over bowing grass-blades and broom;

the birds that flit and pass; singing the song he knows, the grass-hopper in the grass; the voice of the she-oak boughs.

Ah, and the shattered column crowned with the poet's wreath. Who, who keeps silent and solemn his passing place beneath?

~This was a poet that loved God's breath; his life was a passionate quest; he looked down deep in the wells of death, and now he is taking his rest.~

To A. L. Gordon

In night-long days, in aeons where all Time's nights are one; where life and death sing paeans as of Greeks and Galileans, never begun or done;

where fate, the slow swooping condor, comes glooming all the sky -- as you have pondered I ponder, as you have wandered I wander, as you have died, shall I die?

Love and Death

Death? is it death you give? So be it! O Death, thou hast been long my friend, and now thy pale cool cheek shall have my kiss, while the faint breath expires on thy still lips, O lovely Death!

Come then, loose hands, fair Life, without a wail! We've had good hours together, and you were sweet what time love whispered with the nightingale, tho' ever your music by the lark's would fail.

Come then, loose hands! Our lover time is done. Now is the marriage with the eternal sun. The hours are few that rest, are few and fleet. Good-bye! The game is lost: the game is won.

Thomas William Heney.

Absence

Ah, happy air that, rough or soft, May kiss that face and stay; And happy beams that from above May choose to her their way; And happy flowers that now and then Touch lips more sweet than they!

But it were not so blest to be Or light or air or rose; Those dainty fingers tear and toss The bloom that in them glows; And come or go, both wind and ray She heeds not, if she knows.

But if I come thy choice should be Either to love or not -- For if I might I would not kiss And then be all forgot; And it were best thy love to lose If love self-scorn begot.

A Riverina Road

Now while so many turn with love and longing To wan lands lying in the grey North Sea, To thee we turn, hearts, mem'ries, all belonging, Dear land of ours, to thee.

West, ever west, with the strong sunshine marching Beyond the mountains, far from this soft coast, Until we almost see the great plains arching, In endless mirage lost.

A land of camps where seldom is sojourning, Where men like the dim fathers of our race, Halt for a time, and next day, unreturning, Fare ever on apace.

Last night how many a leaping blaze affrighted The wailing birds of passage in their file; And dawn sees ashes dead and embers whited Where men had dwelt awhile.

The sun may burn, the mirage shift and vanish And fade and glare by turns along the sky; The haze of heat may all the distance banish To the uncaring eye.

By speech, or tongue of bird or brute, unbroken Silence may brood upon the lifeless plain, Nor any sign, far off or near, betoken Man in this vast domain.

Though tender grace the landscape lacks, too spacious, Impassive, silent, lonely, to be fair, Their kindness swiftly comes more soft and gracious, Who live or tarry there.