English

on its departure to the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Goodbye, Old Friend, 'tis fourscore years,
Or nigh, since first you won
My childish heart! What wonder tears
Well up now you are gone?

Together you and I no more
May watch how fares our home,
Its shifts and changes floor to floor
While fashions go and come.

But 'mid them ah! to you at least
All paid their courteous bow,

Almighty on High!
I long to know my lord,
Let our love never fade or die
Till mountains have no peaks,
Or rivers run dry,
Till thunder roars in winter,
Or snow pours down in summer,
Till the skies merge with the ground —
Then may I die with my lord!

Why cease to love thee? Is not loving free?
I also love the daisies in the sod,
Discovering alike in them and thee
The love of God.

And if I leave the daisies in the grass,
And thy bright beauty in thy Maker's care,
Why should I not sing softly as I pass,
And call you fair?

I dare to love thee. Be it even so,
I also love the sunset in the west.
I find in thee and in the sunset-glow
God manifest.

Why censure me? I would not rob the sky
Of one red sunset rose or one white star.

You never know! as the gossips say,
You never know!
Thus it fell on a day
In summer last I chanced to be
On a tram-car of the L.C.C. —
Stifling it was, and the folk therein
Good honest folk enough no doubt,
Yet hardly such as from eyes might win
Attention — just the mid-day rout
Of office girls and housewives stout
A-marketing — with a man or two
Listless and tired, as I, to view.
Suddenly,
The car stops, up the gangway strides
A stalwart young Father with Son on arm,

Far off, may be, the heart's eyes shall behold you.
A year ago it would have groan'd unseen
" O could I once attain to you and hold you
The world might perish then! "

But now I cry to you (as ghost to ghost)
" All the world's harvest is not crush'd to this:
" That you love not ." Apart! Each to his post!
No sob — no sigh — no kiss! "

I would not be your master; nor with chiding

Artemisia Village — whose is this land?
It's for teeming souls and spirits, none wise, none fool.
The King of Ghosts, how he hurries them along!
Man is fated never to linger long.

The mysteries of life and death
I neither fear nor understand.
Why fear the Power who gave me breath,
And comes with Beauty in His Hand?

Who binds the stars like pearly braid
Around His brow and on His breast.
Why should my spirit be afraid?
His Will be done! He knoweth best.

How can I be destroyed or slain
By lightning, or by storm, or sea?
These are but figments of my brain
Which somehow into touch with me

Bring something vaster — shadows cast
By great realities behind,

Within a few paces from my window runs
A London high road, where from break of morn
Far into midnight in continuous stream
Most pitiless rout and noise are headlong borne.

Nor here an end; but battered sore the soil
And house-walls quiver as the traffic speeds
This way and that, one ponderous machine
On heels of another, close-packed, serving needs

Of business, or pleasure, or excitement's lust
Of a swift hurrying through from place to place.
“Marvellous Age, has earth e'er known thy peer?”

Thou needest not beleaguer and besiege
The forts and ramparts of my heart's red town:
Already is the hard portcullis raised,
The crimson drawbridge down.

I make surrender to thy lips and eyes;
Proclaim thee Conqueror, and crown thee Queen;
For aught of virtue that my spirit holds
Ever thy fief has been.

Enter, O Queen; the gates are open wide,
Upon the citadel thy banner streams,
Lead in the shining armies of thy love,
O Lady of my Dreams!

I hide my scars; I hide my sins from men,
It needs but little guile
To drape them with a rainbow mist of words,
To veil them with a tear or a smile.

From mine ownself I hide them all away
With glozes and with lies.
Blindfolded, dupe of very shame I stand,
Not daring penetrate the thin disguise.

I hide them even — so I dream — from God,
With penitence and prayer:
I nail my craven sins upon a Cross,
Or bury them to keep my conscience fair.

With cunning and with care I hide them all