There go the loves that wither, The old loves with wearier wings; And all dead years draw thither, And all disastrous things; Dead dreams of days forsaken Blind buds that snows have shaken, Wild leaves that winds have taken, Red strays of ruined springs. We are not sure of sorrow, Time stoops to no man's lure; Weeps that no loves endure. From too much love of living, That no life lives for ever; Winds somewhere safe to sea. Then star nor sun shall waken, In an eternal night. 738 A MATCH IF love were what the rose is, If I were what the words are, That get sweet rain at noon; If you were life, my darling, And I your love were death, And hours of fruitful breath; If you were life, my darling, If you were thrall to sorrow, And laughs of maid and boy; If you were April's lady, And I were lord in May, We'd throw with leaves for hours And I were lord in May. If you were queen of pleasure, 739 A FORSAKEN GARDEN IN a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland, 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, If a step should sound or a word be spoken, Would a ghost not rise at the strange guest's hand? He shall find no life but the sea-wind's, restless 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 pressed of the foot that falls not; 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," 66 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? 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; Till the slow sea rise and the sheer cliff crumble, Death lies dead. 740 WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY MARGARITE SORORI A LATE lark twitters from the quiet skies: Where the sun, his day's work ended, (R) HC XLII |