Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand, Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay. Remember me when no more, day by day, You tell me of our future that you planned: Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.
O Earth, lie heavily upon her eyes;
Seal her sweet eyes weary of watching, Earth; Lie close around her; leave no room for mirth With its harsh laughter, nor for sound of sighs. She hath no questions, she hath no replies,
Hushed in and curtained with a blessèd dearth Of all that irked her from the hour of birth; With stillness that is almost Paradise. Darkness more clear than noonday holdeth her,
Lucile de Nevers (if her riddle I read)
Was a woman of genius: whose genius, indeed, With her life was at war. Once, but once, in that life
The chance had been hers to escape from this strife
In herself; finding peace in the life of another From the passionate wants she, in hers, failed to smother.
But the chance fell too soon, when the crude restless
Golden wires may annoy us as much as steel bars, If they keep us behind prison-windows: impassion'd
Her heart rose and burst the light cage she had fashion'd
Out of glittering trifles around it.
To herself, all her instincts, without hesitation, Embraced the idea of self-immolation.
The strong spirit in her, had her life but been blended
With some man's whose heart had her own comprehended,
All its wealth at his feet would have lavishly
For him she had struggled and striven alone; 30
For him had aspired; in him had transfused
All the gladness and grace of her nature; and used
For him only the spells of its delicate power:
Like the ministering fairy that brings from her
bower
To some maze all the treasures, whose use the fond elf,
More enrich'd by her love, disregards for herself.
But standing apart, as she ever had done,
And her genius, which needed a vent, finding none
In the broad fields of action thrown wide to man's
power,
She unconsciously made it her bulwark and tower, And built in it her refuge, whence lightly she hurl'd Her contempt at the fashions and forms of the world.
And the permanent cause why she now miss'd and fail'd
That firm hold upon life she so keenly assail'd, Was, in all those diurnal occasions that placeSay the world and the woman opposed face to face,
Where the woman must yield, she, refusing to stir,
Offended the world, which in turn wounded her.
As before, in the old-fashion'd manner, I fit
To this character, also, its moral: to wit,
Say the world is a nettle; disturb it, it stings:
Grasp it firmly, it stings not. On one of two things,
If you would not be stung, it behoves you to settle:
Avoid it, or crush it. She crush'd not the nettle;
For she could not; nor would she avoid it; she
tried
With the weak hand of woman to thrust it aside,
And it stung her. A woman is too slight a thing
To trample the world without feeling its sting.
Midnight past! Not a sound of aught
Thro' the silent house, but the wind at his prayers.
I sat by the dying fire, and thought
Of the dear dead woman upstairs.
All up and down the rich red loam, the steers
Strained their strong shoulders in the creaking yoke
Dragging the ploughs; the fat soil rose and rolled
In smooth long waves back from the plough; who
drove
Planted both feet upon the leaping share
To make the furrow deep; among the palms
The tinkle of the rippling water rang,
And where it ran the glad earth 'broidered it
With balsams and the spears of lemon-grass.
Elsewhere were sowers who went forth to sow;
And all the jungle laughed with nesting songs, 20
And all the thickets rustled with small life
Of lizard, bee, beetle, and creeping things
Pleased at the spring-time. In the mango-sprays
The sun-birds flashed; alone at his green forge
Toiled the loud copper-smith; bee-eaters hawked,
Chasing the purple butterflies; beneath,
Striped squirrels raced, the mynas perked and
picked,
The seven brown sisters chattered in the thorn,
The pied fish-tiger hung above the pool,
The egrets stalked among the buffaloes,
The kites sailed circles in the golden air;
About the painted temple peacocks flew,
The blue doves cooed from every well, far off
The village drums beat for some marriage-feast;
All things spoke peace and plenty, and the Prince
Saw and rejoiced. But, looking deep, he saw
The thorns which grow upon this rose of life:
How the swart peasant sweated for his wage,
Toiling for leave to live; and how he urged 39
The great-eyed oxen through the flaming hours,
Goading their velvet flanks: then marked he, too,
How lizard fed on ant, and snake on him,
And kite on both; and how the fish-hawk robbed
The fish-tiger of that which it had seized;
The shrike chasing the bulbul, which did hunt
The jewelled butterflies; till everywhere
Each slew a slayer and in turn was slain,
Life living upon death. So the fair show
Veiled one vast, savage, grim conspiracy
Of mutual murder, from the worm to man,
Who himself kills his fellow; seeing which -
The hungry ploughman and his labouring kine,
Their dewlaps blistered with the bitter yoke,
The rage to live which makes all living strife
The Prince Siddartha sighed. "Is this," he said,
"That happy earth they brought me forth to see?
How salt with sweat the peasant's bread! how hard
The oxen's service! in the brake how fierce
The war of weak and strong! i' th' air with plots!
No refuge e'en in water. Go aside
A space, and let me muse on what ye show."
So saying the good Lord Buddha seated him
Under a jambu-tree, with ankles crossed-
As holy statues sit — and first began
To meditate this deep disease of life,
What its far source and whence its remedy.
So vast a pity filled him, such wide love
For living things, such passion to heal pain,
That by their stress his princely spirit passed
To ecstasy, and, purged from mortal taint
Of sense and self, the boy attained thereat
Dhyana, first step of "the path."
SIR LEWIS MORRIS (b. 1833)
The birds awake which slumbered all night long, And with a gush of song,
First doubting of their strain, then full and wide
Raise their fresh hymns thro' all the country side;
Already, above the dewy clover,
The soaring lark begins to hover
Over his mate's low nest;
And soon, from childhood's early rest
In hall and cottage, to the casement rise
The little ones with their fresh morning eyes, 49
And gaze on the old Earth, which still grows new,
And see the tranquil heaven's unclouded blue,
And, since as yet no sight nor sound of toil
The fair-spread, peaceful picture comes to soil,
Look from their young and steadfast eyes
With such an artless sweet surprise
As Adam knew, when first on either hand
He saw the virgin landscapes of the morning land.
But grows the world then old?
Nay, all things that are born of time
Spring upwards, and expand from youth to prime, Spring up from flower to fruit,
From song-tide till the days are mute,
Green blade to ear of gold.
But not the less through the eternal round
The sleep of winter wakes in days of spring,
And not the less the bare and frozen ground
Grows blithe with blooms that burst and birds
Nature is deathless; herb and tree,
Through time that has been and shall be,
Change not, although the outward form
Seem now the columned palm
Nourished in zones of calm,
And now the gnarled oak that defies the storm.
The cedar's thousand summers are no more
To her than are the fleeting petals gay
Which the young spring, ere March is o'er,
Scarce offered, takes away.
Eternal are her works. Unchanging she,
Alike in short-lived flower and ever-changing sea.
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