My wages taken, and in my heart
Some late lark singing,

Let me be gathered to the quiet west,
The sundown splendid and serene,

Death.

William Ernest Henley [1849-1903]

"IN AFTER DAYS"

IN after days when grasses high
O'er-top the stone where I shall lie,
Though ill or well the world adjust
My slender claim to honored dust,
I shall not question or reply.

I shall not see the morning sky;
I shall not hear the night-wind sigh;
I shall be mute, as all men must
In after days!

But yet, now living, fain were I
That some one then should testify,
Saying "He held his pen in trust
To Art, not serving shame or lust."
Will none?—Then let my memory die
In after days!

Austin Dobson [1840

"CALL ME NOT DEAD"

CALL me not dead when I, indeed, have gone
Into the company of the everliving
High and most glorious poets! Let thanksgiving
Rather be made. Say: "He at last hath won
Rest and release, converse supreme and wise,
Music and song and light of immortal faces;
To-day, perhaps, wandering in starry places,
He hath met Keats, and known him by his eyes.

To-morrow (who can say?) Shakespeare may pass,
And our lost friend just catch one syllable
Of that three-centuried wit that kept so well;
Or Milton; or Dante, looking on the grass

Thinking of Beatrice, and listening still

To chanted hymns that sound from the heavenly hill."
Richard Watson Gilder [1844-1909]

EPILOGUE

From "Asolando"

Ar the midnight in the silence of the sleep-time,

When you set your fancies free,

Will they pass to where by death, fools think, imprisoned

Low he lies who once so loved you, whom you loved so, -Pity me?

Oh to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken!

What had I on earth to do

With the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly?
Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did I drivel

-Being-who?

One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,

Never doubted clouds would break,

Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph,

Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,

Sleep to wake.

No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time
Greet the unseen with a cheer!

Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be,
"Strive and thrive!" cry "Speed,-fight on, fare ever

There as here!"

Robert Browning [1812-1889]

CROSSING THE BAR

SUNSET and evening star,

And one clear call for me!

And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,

Too full for sound and foam,

When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,

And after that the dark!

And may there be no sadness of farewell,

When I embark;

For though from out our bourne of Time and Place

The flood may bear me far,

I hope to see my Pilot face to face

When I have crossed the bar.

Alfred Tennyson [1809-1892]

L'ENVOI

WHEN Earth's last picture is painted, and the tubes are twisted and dried,

When the oldest colors have faded, and the youngest critic

has died,

We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it-lie down for an

eon or two,

Till the Master of All Good Workmen shall set us to work anew!

And those that were good shall be happy: they shall sit in a golden chair;

They shall splash at a ten-league canvas with brushes of comets' hair;

They shall find real saints to draw from-Magdalene, Peter, and Paul;

They shall work for an age at a sitting and never be tired at all!

And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame;

And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame;

But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his sepa

rate star

Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of Things as

They Are!

Rudyard Kipling [1865

"THEY ARE ALL GONE"

FRIENDS DEPARTED

THEY are all gone into the world of light!
And I alone sit lingering here;
Their very memory is fair and bright,
And my sad thoughts doth clear.

It glows and glitters in my cloudy breast,
Like stars upon some gloomy grove,

Or those faint beams in which this hill is dressed
After the sun's remove.

I see them walking in an air of glory,
Whose light doth trample on my days:
My days, which are at best but dull and hoary,
Mere glimmering and decays.

O holy Hope! and high Humility,

High as the heavens above!

These are your walks, and you have showed them me, To kindle my cold love.

Dear, beauteous Death! the jewel of the Just!

Shining nowhere, but in the dark;

What mysteries do lie beyond thy dust,

Could man outlook that mark!

He that hath found some fledged bird's nest may know,

At first sight, if the bird be flown;

But what fair dell or grove he sings in now,

That is to him unknown.

And yet, as Angels in some brighter dreams
Call to the soul, when man doth sleep,

So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes,
And into glory peep.