_A.D. Mdcclxxviii-Mdcccxxx_

BETWEEN the wet trees and the sorry steeple, Keep, Time, in dark Soho, what once was Hazlitt, Seeker of Truth, and finder oft of Beauty;

Beauty's a sinking light, ah, none too faithful; But Truth, who leaves so here her spent pursuer, Forgets not her great pawn: herself shall claim it.

Therefore sleep safe, thou dear and battling spirit, Safe also on our earth, begetting ever Some one love worth the ages and the nations!

Falleth no thing that was to thee eternal. Sleep safe in dark Soho: the stars are shining, Titian and Wordsworth live; the People marches.

The Vigil-at-Arms

KEEP holy watch with silence, prayer, and fasting Till morning break, and every bugle play; Unto the One aware from everlasting Dear are the winners: thou art more than they.

Forth from this peace on manhood's way thou goest, Flushed with resolve, and radiant in mail; Blessing supreme for men unborn thou sowest, O knight elect! O soul ordained to fail!

A Friend's Song for Simoisius

THE breath of dew and twilight's grace Be on the lonely battle-place, And to so young, so kind a face, The long protecting grasses cling! (Alas, alas, That one inexorable thing!)

In rocky hollows cool and deep, The honey-bees unrifled sleep; The early moon from Ida steep Comes to the empty wrestling-ring;

Upon the widowed wind recede No echoes of the shepherd's reed; And children without laughter lead The war-horse to the watering;

With footstep separate and slow The father and the mother go, Not now upon an urn they know To mingle tears for comforting.

Thou stranger Ajax Telamon! What to the lovely hast thou done, That nevermore a maid may run With him across the flowery Spring?

The world to me has nothing dear Beyond the namesake river here: Oh, Simois is wild and clear! And to his brink my heart I bring;

My heart, if only this might be, Would stay his waters from the sea, To cover Troy, to cover me, To haste the hour of perishing. (Alas, alas, That one inexorable thing!)

To an Ideal

THAT I have tracked you from afar, my crown I call it and my height: All hail, O dear and difficult star! All hail, O heart of light! No pleasure born of time for me, Who in you touch eternity. If I have found you where you are, I win my mortal fight.

You flee the plain: I therefore choose summit and solitude for mine, The high air where I cannot lose our comradeship divine. More lovely here, to wakened blood, Sparse leaf and hesitating bud, Than rosaries in the dewy vales for which the dryads pine.

Spirit austere! lend aid: I walk along inclement ridges too, Disowning toys of sense, to baulk my soul of ends untrue. Because man's cry, by night and day, Cried not for God, I broke away. On, at your ruthless pace! I'll stalk, a hilltop ghost, with you.

In a Ruin, after a Thunder Storm

KEEP of the Norman, old to flood and cloud! Thou dost reproach me with thy sunset look, That in our common menace I forsook Hope, the last fear, and stood impartial proud: Almost, almost, while ether spake aloud, Death from the smoking stones my spirit shook Into thy hollow as leaves into a brook, No more than they by heaven's assassins cowed.

But now thy thousand-scarrèd steep is flecked With the calm kisses of the light delayed, Breathe on me better valour: to subject My soul to greed of life, and grow afraid Lest ere her fight's full term, the Architect See downfall of the stronghold that He made.

Beati Mortui

BLESSED the Dead in Spirit, our brave dead Not passed, but perfected: Who tower up to mystical full bloom From self, as from a known alchemic tomb; Who out of wrong Run forth with laughter and a broken thong; Who win from pain their strange and flawless grant Of peace anticipant; Who cerements lately wore of sin, but now, Unbound from foot to brow, Gleam in and out of cities, beautiful As sun-born colours of a forest pool Where Autumn sees The splash of walnuts from her thinning trees.

Though wondered-at of some, yea, feared almost As any chantry ghost, How sight of these, in hermitage or mart, Makes glad a wistful heart! For life's apologetics read most true In spirits risen anew, Like larks in air To whom flat earth is all a heavenward stair, And who from yonder parapet Scorn every mortal fret, And rain their sweet bewildering staves Upon our furrow of fresh-delvèd graves.

If thus to have trod and left the wormy way Makes men so wondrous gay, So stripped and free and potently alive, Who would not his infirmity survive, And bathe in victory, and come to be As blithe as ye, Saints of the ended wars? Ah, greeting give; Turn not away, too fugitive: But hastening towards us, hallow the foul street, And sit with us at meat, And of your courtesy, on us unwise Fix oft those purer eyes, Till in ourselves who love them dwell The same sure light ineffable: Till they who walk with us in after years Forgetting time and tears (As we with you), shall sing all day instead: "How blessed are the Dead!"

Two Irish Peasant Songs