Jane is big
with death, Don
sad and kind - Jane
though she's dying
is full of mind
We talk about the table
the little walnut one
how it's like
Emily Dickinson's
But Don says No
Dickinson's
was made of iron. No
said Jane
Of flesh.
There will be rose and rhododendron
When you are dead and under ground;
Still will be heard from white syringas
Heavy with bees, a sunny sound;
Still will the tamaracks be raining
After the rain has ceased, and still
Will there be robins in the stubble,
Brown sheep upon the warm green hill.
Spring will not ail nor autumn falter;
Nothing will know that you are gone,
Saving alone some sullen plough-land
None but yourself sets foot upon;
Saving the may-weed and the pig-weed
Too proud to die; broken and blind he died
The darkest way, and did not turn away,
A cold kind man brave in his narrow pride
On that darkest day, Oh, forever may
He lie lightly, at last, on the last, crossed
Hill, under the grass, in love, and there grow
Young among the long flocks, and never lie lost
Or still all the numberless days of his death, though
Above all he longed for his mother's breast
Which was rest and dust, and in the kind ground
The darkest justice of death, blind and unblessed.
Your dextrous wit will haunt us long
Wounding our grief with yesterday.
Your laughter is a broken song;
And death has found you, kind and gay.
We may forget those transient things
That made your charm and our delight:
But loyal love has deathless wings
That rise and triumph out of night.
So, in the days to come, your name
Shall be as music that ascends
When honour turns a heart from shame...
O heart of hearts! ... O friend of friends!
I count each day a little life,
With birth and death complete;
I cloister it from care and strife
And keep it sane and sweet.
II
With eager eyes I greet the morn,
Exultant as a boy,
Knowing that I am newly born
To wonder and to joy.
III
And when the sunset splendours wane
And ripe for rest am I,
Knowing that I will live again,
Exultantly I die.
IV
O that all Life were but a Day
Sunny and sweet and sane!
And is it not a gesture grand
To drink oneself to death?
Oh sure 'tis I can understand,
Being of sober breath.
And so I do not sing success,
But dirge the damned who fall,
And who contempt for life express
Through alcohol.
II
Of Stephen Foster and of Poe,
Of Burns and Wilde I think;
And weary men who dared to go
The wanton way of drink.
Strange mortals blind to bitter blame,
And deaf to loud delight,
Who from the shades of sin and shame
Naked and grey the Cotswolds stand
Beneath the summer sun,
And the stubble fields on either hand
Where Sour and Avon run.
There is no change in the patient land
That has bred us every one.
She should have passed in cloud and fire
And saved us from this sin
Of war--red war--'twixt child and sire,
Household and kith and kin,
In the heart of a sleepy Midland shire,
With the harvest scarcely in.
But there is no change as we meet at last
On the brow-head or the plain,
Come to me in the silence of the night;
Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
As sunlight on a stream;
Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.
O dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,
Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,
Where souls brimfull of love abide and meet;
Where thirsting longing eyes
Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, lets out no more.
Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
158
Dying! Dying in the night!
Won't somebody bring the light
So I can see which way to go
Into the everlasting snow?
And "Jesus"! Where is Jesus gone?
They said that Jesus—always came—
Perhaps he doesn't know the House—
This way, Jesus, Let him pass!
Somebody run to the great gate
And see if Dollie's coming! Wait!
I hear her feet upon the stair!
Death won't hurt—now Dollie's here!
153
Dust is the only Secret—
Death, the only One
You cannot find out all about
In his "native town."
Nobody know "his Father"—
Never was a Boy—
Hadn't any playmates,
Or "Early history"—
Industrious! Laconic!
Punctual! Sedate!
Bold as a Brigand!
Stiller than a Fleet!
Builds, like a Bird, too!
Christ robs the Nest—
Robin after Robin
Smuggled to Rest!
