"Oh, sweet," she said, "that afternoon, The smile of God on land and sea;
And sweet through many a vanished June
Comes back, like a remembered tune, The silence of the shore to me!
Oh, sweet the moment was! the scene! The flashing of the shingles wet, The scent of clover and of bean,
Warm fragrance of the fields that met The salt fresh breezes of the sea!
The white sails dropping out of sight Were kindled into tawny flame,
And all the moor lay steeped in light
The way he came, the way he came!"
"Oh, sweet," she said, "the warm, wet reach Of glittering sand! the tide that woke
In tumult all along the beach, Yet made the very calm it broke!
Blue was the heaven that o'er us bent; The sheep upon a sunward slope
A quiet to the landscape lent; And all things gave a widening scope
To thoughts of peace and calm content, And all things seemed in league with hope
The way we went, the way we went!"
"Bury, oh dead, thy dead!" Hearken the call, Christ bids us leave our dead and follow him; What tho' the steps be feeble, and eyes dim
With tears that rise and burn, but may not fall?
Leave the unburied dead in. Death's great hall: For Christ is waiting and the dead are dead; We may not pause to smooth their burial bed,
We may not stay to spread their funeral pall.
Farewell, oh lovely dead, oh tender past! Who liest with stone-cold brow and lips that miss The passionate farewell and last long kiss.
Oh dead! shall this cold parting be the last? In the dim future's promise may there be No past, no present — knit in one for thee?
"Bury, oh dead, thy dead!" Can Death's behest Close the pale eyelids? Can dead fingers fold Dead hands in peace, or in the graveyard cold
Commit the soulless body to its rest?
guns rise and set; each evening in the west Dim clouds attend the funeral of the day; Night falls; men sleep; and still, oh dead: ye stay.
No peace for me on earth's unearthly breast
Haunted by you. I would, I would, oh dead, I would ye had no immortality! I would ye too could sleep and let me be!
Rest, rest! hath not your requiem been said? Ah no! With faces turned to me they lie; They rise, they answer — "No, we cannot die!"
