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If you were April's lady,

And I were lord in May,

We'd throw with leaves for hours
And draw for days with flowers,
Till day like night were shady
And night were bright like day;
If you were April's lady,

And I were lord in May.

If you were queen of pleasure,
And I were king of pain,
We'd hunt down love together,
Pluck out his flying-feather,
And teach his feet a measure,
And find his mouth a rein;
If you were queen of pleasure.
And I were king of pain.

739

A FORSAKEN GARDEN

In a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland,
At the sea-down's edge between windward and lee,
Walled round with rocks as an inland island,

The ghost of a garden fronts the sea.

A girdle of brushwood and thorn encloses

The steep square slope of the blossomless bed Where the weeds that grew green from the graves of its

roses

Now lie dead.

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 gray bare walks lain guestless,
Through branches and briars 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 pressed 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 sear, 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 forever;

Here change may come not till all change end.

From the graves they have made they shall rise up never;
Who have left naught living to ravage and rend.
Earth, stones, and thorns of the wild ground growing,
When 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.

740

WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY

[1849-1903]

MARGARITE SORORI

A LATE lark twitters from the quiet skies:

And from the west,

Where the sun, his day's work ended,
Lingers as in content,

There falls on the old, gray city
An influence luminous and serene,
A shining peace.

The smoke ascends

In a rosy-and-golden haze. The spires
Shine, and are changed. In the valley
Shadows rise. The lark sings on. The sun
Closing his benediction,

Sinks, and the darkening air

Thrills with a sense of the triumphing night-
Night with her train of stars

And her great gift of sleep.

So be my passing!

My task accomplished and the long day done,
My wages taken, and in my heart

Some late lark singing,

Let me be gathered to the quiet west,

The sundown splendid and serene,
Death.

741

To R. T. H. B.

OUT of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

742

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate;

I am the captain of my soul.

ENGLAND, MY ENGLAND

ENGLAND, my England?
What is there I would not do,
England, my own?

With your glorious eyes austere,
As the Lord were walking near,
Whispering terrible things and dear
As the Song on your bugles blown,
England-

Round the world on your bugles blown!

Where shall the watchful sun,

England, my England,

Match the master-work you've done,

England, my own?

When shall he rejoice agen

Such a breed of mighty men

As come forward, one to ten,

To the Song on your bugles blown,
England-

Down the years on your bugles blown?

Ever the faith endures,

England, my England:

'Take and break us: we are yours,

England, my own!

Life is good, and joy runs high
Between English earth and sky:
Death is death; but we shall die

To the Song of your bugles blown,
England-

To the stars on your bugles blown!'

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