She knew not those sweet words she spake, Oh, there were flowers in Storrington Her beauty smoothed earth's furrowed face. A look, a word of her winsome mouth, A berry red, a guileless look, A still word, strings of sand! For standing artless as the air, She took the berries with her hand, The fairest things have fleetest end, She looked a little wistfully, She went her unremembering way, The pang of all the partings gone, She left me marvelling why my soul Still, still I seemed to see her, still Nothing begins, and nothing ends, Francis Thompson CCCXCVIII TO THE SINKING SUN How graciously thou wear'st the yoke The grasses, like an anchored smoke, This knoll is snowed with blosmy manna, Here every eve thou stretchest out And marvellously bring'st about Nor ever through like-ordered heaven There every eve thou goest down Nor ever twice alike go'st down Nor like-ways is one flame-sopped flower Not twice alike! I am not blind, O Sun! I ask thee less or more, O give me unprevisioned new, Wonder and sadness are the lot Its penetrant surprise. Burthens my spirit and the skies. O altered joy, all joyed of yore O grief grieved out, and yet once more I dream, and all was dreamed before, Francis Thompson CCCXCIX I came to the doors of the House of Love And knocked as the starry night went by; And my true love cried "Who knocks?" and I said "It is I." And Love looked down from a lattice above Where the roses were dry as the lips of the dead; "There is not room in the House of Love For you both," he said. I plucked a leaf from the porch and crept I came once more to the House of Love And my true love cried "Who knocks?" and I said "None now but thee." And the great doors opened wide apart And a voice rang out from a glory of light, "Make room, make room for a faithful heart In the House of Love, to-night." Alfred Noyes CCCC LOVE'S ROSARY All day I tell my rosary For now my love's away: All day I tell my rosary, And here's a flower of memory, And here's a hope of flowers, And here's an hour that yearns with pain For old forgotten years, An hour of loss, an hour of gain, And then a shower of tears. All day I tell my rosary, And never a whisper comes to me, But, if it's parting more endears, Or my heart will break in the darkness All day I tell my rosary My rosary of hours, Until an hour shall bring to me The hope of all the flowers. I tell my rosary of hours, For O, my love's away; And- About the break of day. Alfred Noyes CCCCI SONG OF HANRAHAN THe red Oh, Death will never find us in the heart of the wood, The song is in my blood, night and day; We will pluck a scented petal from the Rose upon the Rood Where Love lies bleeding on the way; We will listen to the linnet and watch the waters leap, When the clouds go dreaming by, And under the wild roses and the stars we will sleep And wander on together, you and I. We shall understand the mystery that none has understood, We shall know why the leafy gloom is green; Oh, Death will never find us in the heart of the wood When we see what the stars have seen; We have heard the hidden song of the soft dews falling At the end of the last dark sky, Where all the sorrows of the world are calling, We must wander on together, you and I. |