Part 16

III

His fellow-yearsmen passed, and then In later hearts I looked for him again; And found him—shrunk, alas! into a thin And spectral mannikin.

Lastly I ask—now old and chill— If aught of him remain unperished still; And find, in me alone, a feeble spark, Dying amid the dark.

February 1899.

THE TO-BE-FORGOTTEN

I HEARD a small sad sound, And stood awhile amid the tombs around: “Wherefore, old friends,” said I, “are ye distrest, Now, screened from life’s unrest?”

—“O not at being here; But that our future second death is drear; When, with the living, memory of us numbs, And blank oblivion comes!

III

“Those who our grandsires be Lie here embraced by deeper death than we; Nor shape nor thought of theirs canst thou descry With keenest backward eye.

“They bide as quite forgot; They are as men who have existed not; Theirs is a loss past loss of fitful breath; It is the second death.

“We here, as yet, each day Are blest with dear recall; as yet, alway In some soul hold a loved continuance Of shape and voice and glance.

“But what has been will be— First memory, then oblivion’s turbid sea; Like men foregone, shall we merge into those Whose story no one knows.

VII

“For which of us could hope To show in life that world-awakening scope Granted the few whose memory none lets die, But all men magnify?

VIII

“We were but Fortune’s sport; Things true, things lovely, things of good report We neither shunned nor sought . . . We see our bourne, And seeing it we mourn.”

WIVES IN THE SERE

NEVER a careworn wife but shows, If a joy suffuse her, Something beautiful to those Patient to peruse her, Some one charm the world unknows Precious to a muser, Haply what, ere years were foes, Moved her mate to choose her.

But, be it a hint of rose That an instant hues her, Or some early light or pose Wherewith thought renews her— Seen by him at full, ere woes Practised to abuse her— Sparely comes it, swiftly goes, Time again subdues her.

THE SUPERSEDED

AS newer comers crowd the fore, We drop behind. —We who have laboured long and sore Times out of mind, And keen are yet, must not regret To drop behind.

Yet there are of us some who grieve To go behind; Staunch, strenuous souls who scarce believe Their fires declined, And know none cares, remembers, spares Who go behind.

III

’Tis not that we have unforetold The drop behind; We feel the new must oust the old In every kind; But yet we think, must we, must we, Too, drop behind?

AN AUGUST MIDNIGHT

A SHADED lamp and a waving blind, And the beat of a clock from a distant floor: On this scene enter—winged, horned, and spined— A longlegs, a moth, and a dumbledore; While ’mid my page there idly stands A sleepy fly, that rubs its hands . . .

Thus meet we five, in this still place, At this point of time, at this point in space. —My guests parade my new-penned ink, Or bang at the lamp-glass, whirl, and sink. “God’s humblest, they!” I muse. Yet why? They know Earth-secrets that know not I.

MAX GATE, 1899.