Classic Poem

I watch the silent night fall o'er the sea.—
Is this strange sombre mantle, Death, like thee?
Doth this dim starless void
Whence the faint breath of summer air floats meward
Hold all the souls whose wings have travelled seaward
By the awful deep decoyed?

Where are the myriad souls who went before?
Who watched the same seas break on the same shore,—
Then trusted Death, and went?
Sometimes an army on the golden beach
Encamps, with hum of multitudinous speech;
The next day, not one tent!

The next day not one white-topped tent is seen:
Only the white-topped billows, dark and green,
And the dark threatening skies.
The foot-prints of the host are on the shore,
But the bright-armoured warriors mix no more;—
No shouts, and no replies.

Can there be room in the celestial fields
For such a concourse of gay swords and shields?
Would all the stars provide
Home for the increasing countless hosts of these,
Or all the untravelled dark-blue billowy seas
Of heaven from side to side?

Nor only human souls have gone. The flowers
Have sent their delegates from woods and bowers
To try the land of death:
To bring back tidings whether sister-stems
Within that land wave petalled diadems
And mingle fragrant breath.

Armies of blossoms past all mortal thought
Since Eve amid their primal host was brought
Have dared the fatal track:
And of these blossoms not one single rose
Breathes answer to our doubt. No hare-bell throws
One faint blue petal back.

The winds of night come scented from afar
As though from worlds where deathless blossoms are:
Sisters perhaps of these.
But never flower from that far land returns:—
No violet-messengers: no risen ferns:
No flushed anemones.

And yet the land where these dead blossoms meet
Must surely be beyond all gardens sweet,
Beyond all woodlands fair.
The land whereto our loved ones, smiling, passed
Cannot be lonely. Though the land be vast
We shall be welcomed there.