O sister, sister, thy first-begotten!

The hands that cling and the feet that follow, The voice of the child's blood crying yet, Who hath remembered me? who hath forgotten? Thou hast forgotten, O summer swallow, But the world shall end when I forget. A. C. SWINBURNE.

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393

THE GARDEN OF PROSERPINE

Here, where the world is quiet;

Here, where all trouble seems
Dead winds' and spent waves' riot
In doubtful dreams of dreams;
I watch the green field growing
For reaping folk and sowing,
For harvest-time and mowing,
A sleepy world of streams.

I am tired of tears and laughter,
And men that laugh and weep;
Of what may come hereafter

For men that sow to reap :
I am weary of days and hours,
Blown buds of barren flowers,
Desires and dreams and powers
And everything but sleep.

Here life has death for neighbour,
And far from eye or ear
Wan waves and wet winds labour,
Weak ships and spirits steer;
They drive adrift, and whither
They wot not who make thither;
But no such winds blow hither,

And no such things grow here.

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10

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No growth of moor or coppice,
No heather-flower or vine,
But bloomless buds of poppies,
Green grapes of Proserpine,
Pale beds of blowing rushes,
Where no leaf blooms or blushes
Save this whereout she crushes
For dead men deadly wine.

Though one were strong as seven,

He too with death shall dwell, Nor wake with wings in heaven,

Nor weep for pains in hell; Though one were fair as roses, His beauty clouds and closes ; And well though love reposes,

In the end it is not well.

Pale, beyond porch and portal,
Crowned with calm leaves, she stands
Who gathers all things mortal
With cold immortal hands;

Her languid lips are sweeter
Than love's who fears to greet her
To men that mix and meet her
From many times and lands.

She waits for each and other,

She waits for all men born; Forgets the earth her mother,

The life of fruits and corn;

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And spring and seed and swallow
Take wing for her and follow
Where summer song rings hollow
And flowers are put to scorn.

There go the loves that wither,
The old loves with wearier wings;
And all dead years draw thither,
And all disastrous things;
Dead dreams of days forsaken,
Blind buds that snows have shaken,
Wild leaves that winds have taken,
Red strays of ruined springs.

We are not sure of sorrow,
And joy was never sure;
To-day will die to-morrow;
Time stoops to no man's lure;
And love, grown faint and fretful,
With lips but half regretful
Sighs, and with eyes forgetful
Weeps that no loves endure.

From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives for ever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river

Winds somewhere safe to sea.

Then star nor sun shall waken,
Nor any change of light:
Nor sound of waters shaken,
Nor any sound or sight:
Nor wintry leaves nor vernal,
Nor days nor things diurnal;
Only the sleep eternal

In an eternal night.

A. C. SWINBURNE.

394

A FORSAKEN GARDEN

In a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland,
Atthesea-down'sedge between windward and lee,
Walled round with rocks as an inland island,
The ghost of a garden fronts the sea.

A girdle of brushwood and thorn encloses

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The steep square slope of the blossomless bed Where the weeds that grew green from the graves of its roses

Now lie dead.

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The fields fall southward, abrupt and broken,
To the low last edge of the long lone land.
If a step should sound or a word be spoken,
Would a ghost not rise at the strange guest's
hand?

So long have the grey bare walks lain guestless,
Through branches and briers if a man make way
He shall find no life but the sea-wind's, restless
Night and day.

The dense hard passage is blind and stifled

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That crawls by a track none turn to climb To the strait waste place that the years have rifled Of all but the thorns that are touched not of time.

The thorns he spares when the rose is taken; The rocks are left when he wastes the plain. The wind that wanders, the weeds wind-shaken, These remain.

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Not a flower to be pressed of the foot that falls not ; As the heart of a dead man the seed-plots are dry; From the thicket of thorns whence the nightingale calls not,

Could she call, there were never a rose to reply. Over the meadows that blossom and wither

Rings but the note of a sea-bird's song; Only the sun and the rain come hither

All year long.

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The sun burns sere and the rain dishevels

One gaunt bleak blossom of scentless breath. Only the wind here hovers and revels

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In a round where life seems barren as death. Here there was laughing of old, there was weeping, Haply, of lovers none ever will know, Whose eyes went seaward a hundred sleeping

Years ago.

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Heart handfast in heart as they stood, 'Look thither,' Did he whisper? 'look forth from the flowers

to the sea;

For the foam-flowers endure when the roseblossoms wither,

And men that love lightly may die but we?' And the same wind sang and the same waves whitened,

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And or ever the garden's last petals were shed, In the lips that had whispered, the eyes that had lightened,

Love was dead.

Or they loved their life through, and then went whither ?

And were one to the end-but what end who

knows?

Love deep as the sea as a rose must wither,

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As the rose-red seaweed that mocks the rose. Shall the dead take thought for the dead to love them? What love was ever as deep as a grave? They are loveless now as the grass above them, Or the wave.

All are at one now, roses and lovers,

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Not known of the cliffs and the fields and the sea. Not a breath of the time that has been hovers In the air now soft with a summer to be. Not a breath shall there sweeten the seasons hereafter

Of the flowers or the lovers that laugh now or weep, When as they that are free now of weeping and laughter

We shall sleep.