If you were April's lady, And I were lord in May, We'd throw with leaves for hours And I were lord in May. If you were queen of pleasure, 739 A FORSAKEN GARDEN In a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland, The ghost of a garden fronts the sea. A girdle of brushwood and thorn encloses The steep square slope of the blossomless bed Where the weeds that grew green from the graves of its roses Now lie dead. The fields fall southward, abrupt and broken, Would a ghost not rise at the strange guest's hand? He shall find no life but the sea-wind's, restless The dense hard passage is blind and stifled That crawls by a track none turn to climb The rocks are left when he wastes the plain; Not a flower to be pressed of the foot that falls not; 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 The sun burns sear, and the rain dishevels One gaunt bleak blossom of scentless breath. Only the wind here hovers and revels 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. Heart handfast in heart as they stood, "Look thither," And the same wind sang, and the same waves whitened, 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, As the rose-red seaweed that mocks the rose. Shall the dead take thought for the dead to love them? They are loveless now as the grass above them Or the wave. All are at one now, roses and lovers, 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 Here death may deal not again forever; Here change may come not till all change end. From the graves they have made they shall rise up never; Till the slow sea rise and the sheer cliff crumble, 740 WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY [1849-1903] MARGARITE SORORI A LATE lark twitters from the quiet skies: And from the west, Where the sun, his day's work ended, There falls on the old, gray city The smoke ascends In a rosy-and-golden haze. The spires Sinks, and the darkening air Thrills with a sense of the triumphing night- And her great gift of sleep. So be my passing! My task accomplished and the long day done, Some late lark singing, Let me be gathered to the quiet west, The sundown splendid and serene, 741 To R. T. H. B. OUT of the night that covers me, In the fell clutch of circumstance Beyond this place of wrath and tears 742 It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul. ENGLAND, MY England ENGLAND, my England? With your glorious eyes austere, Round the world on your bugles blown! Where shall the watchful sun, England, my England, Match the master-work you've done, England, my own? When shall he rejoice agen Such a breed of mighty men As come forward, one to ten, To the Song on your bugles blown, Down the years on your bugles blown? Ever the faith endures, England, my England: 'Take and break us: we are yours, England, my own! Life is good, and joy runs high To the stars on your bugles blown!" |