Classic Poem

I.

So many have gone before that now the further valleys
Are far more full of flowers and songs than sunlit alleys
Of earth's green woods forlorn. —
The hills of heaven resound to many a dead love's laughter: —
So many loves have gone! Shall we not hasten after?
So many loves are dead, — dead, or new-born!

II.

Oh, surely heaven is full of sweet familiar faces,
And hyacinths are there and ferns from forest-places
That here we know so well!
So many flowers have died, since first the pain of living
Smote through our souls. Our world has been so great at giving.
Heaven must be sumptuous with our pine-woods' smell!

III.

So many have gone before! The blossoms of all summers:
The leaves of every spring: the bees, those gay-coat mummers:
The gilded butterflies. —
Our generous earth has given so freely of its splendour
That all the shores of heaven must be fulfilled of tender
Light shed from sunlit and from moonlit skies!

IV.

Heaven has the best of us! God steals our fairest faces.
Heaven envies earth, it seems, her passionate embraces,
And even her thymy hills.
And even the banks where bloom the violets pure and lowly
And where the green fern-fronds unwind their tresses slowly,
And even the soft low laughter of our rills.

V.

God! is thine heaven devoid of children that thou takest
Ours? Is thine heaven devoid of passion that thou breakest
Our love-cups one by one?
God! is thine heaven devoid of starlight that thou stealest
Each morning all the stars, — of light since thou concealest
After earth's every sunset earth's own sun?

VI.

So many have gone before, — bright petals, wings, and faces, —
That flowerless, loveless, dry, the old green flowerful places
Seem dead for evermore.
Yea: heaven it is which holds, as earth held once, our treasures.
We started first from heaven, and now our bark remeasures
The lonely waters to the primal shore.

VII.

Earth we have tried: which lay before us like an island
Divine 'mid waters blue and bright with mist-clad highland
Beneath the morning sun.
Earth we have tried: and tried the love-lips of its daughters,
And stooped our lips to drink its silvery running waters:
And now we are weary, — and our task is done.

VIII.

Now in the evening glow that falleth strange and solemn
Across the waters grey and lights the last tree-column
On the old isle of Earth.
With hearts too full to speak, with longings unavailing
Towards deathland whence we came, or birthland, we are sailing —
But not now round us rings the morning's mirth.

IX.

Not now around us shine the love-looks that we cherished!
How many and many a friend in earth's green vales has perished,
Exploring through the day
The hills and nooks and dells that seemed so fair and harmless.
Full of young strength we came: but strengthless now and armless
We travel backward through the lonely grey.

X.

How solemn and how weird, over the silent water,
That far-lit fir-clump gleams! There kissed we an earth-daughter
(How many years ago?)
That far blue lonely hill rang once with shouts so merry
That the birds glanced aside from threatened husk or berry
To wonder what could move man's laughter so!

XI.

Beside that hazel-copse shone eyes so sweet and fearless
That for their sake it seemed the whole world must be tearless
For ever and evermore!
Where are those eyes to-day? Ah! not on board our vessel.
Gaze backward, as the keel with onward waves doth wrestle:
Mark you that white stone on the sunless shore?

XII.

Within that forest sleeps another and another.
A child within that glade: a grey-haired well-loved mother
Within those garden-walls.
Across the foam-flecked deep their dim eyes seem to glisten:
But dimmer are our eyes, as our strained ears would listen
To every voice whose old soft whisper calls.

XIII.

Their spirits have crossed the deep before us. As we follow,
Obscurer grow the earth's green glades and very hollow
Her old love-laughter rings!
Oh not behind, — in front the white hands wait and beckon: —
The welcoming looks upon death's stately shores we reckon
By the tombstones of summers and past springs.


XIV.

The earth fades out of sight. We cross the cold grey water,
Almost alone at last. — Flower-son and blossom-daughter,
Flower-wife and mother-flower,
Not these are with us now. They all have passed before us.
For our death-psalm we have the white waves' sobbing chorus:
Salt air and moonlight for our last love-bower.

XV.

But oh how full is death, or heaven, of friendly faces!
More full of joyous bloom than ever the old green places
In the earth's old best days were
Are those wan shores whose peaks now just begin to waver
In the wild light of dawn: whence unknown blossom-savour
Floats towards us faintly through the blue night-air.