THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 10 ,
 
 A LAST HARVEST
 
 A LAST HARVEST 
 
 LYRICS AXD SONNETS FROM 
 THE BOOK OF LOVE 
 
 PHILIP B O U R K E M A R S T O N 
 
 Anthill' of Soii^-T/(Il- ami Oiher Poevis,' 
 •All III All: ' ^I'ld Voices; etc. 
 
 \S I T H B I O G R A 1' H I C A L S K K T C H 
 
 BV 
 
 LOUISE CHANDLER .MUl'LTOX 
 
 Author of Swallow Flights,' 'In the Garden of Dreams; etc. 
 
 L () N DON 
 ELK IX >L\ THEWS, VKiO STREET 
 
 1891
 
 J. MILLER ANn SON, PKINTERS, EDINBURGH
 
 ?R 
 
 L33 
 
 FOK THOSE WHO LOVED 
 
 PHILIP B O U K K E M A R S T O N 
 
 IN' HIS LIFE 
 AND WHO MOURN FOK HIM, NOW THAT HE IS DEAD 
 I HAVE GATHERED THIS 
 • LAST HARVEST ' 
 
 L. C. M. 
 
 917e6S
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 To Philip Bourke Marston xi 
 
 Biographical Sketch . . . . . i 
 
 Lyrics— 
 
 Love's Lost Pleasure-PIoiise ..... 35 
 
 Love's Lady . . . . . . . -37 
 
 Alas !......... 41 
 
 My Life puts forth to sea alone . . . -43 
 
 Flown Love ........ 45 
 
 A Bagatelle ....... 47 
 
 A Castle in Spain . ...... 49 
 
 A Song for Twilight . . . . . . .51 
 
 The River ........ 54 
 
 Love's Flying Feet ....... 56 
 
 To Sleep 58 
 
 Lovers ......... 60 
 
 A Remembered Tune ...... 61 
 
 After Love's Passing ....... 63 
 
 A Question ........ 66 
 
 Heart-Breaks and Songs . . . . . .68 
 
 Looking Forward, in February .... 70
 
 viii CONTEA'TS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 LVKICS, continued — 
 
 Her Pity 72 
 
 Go, Songs of Mine ...... 74 
 
 After Summer ........ 7^ 
 
 At Last 79 
 
 Last Garden Secrets— 
 
 Roses and the Nightingale ..... 85 
 
 Flower Fairies ....... 88 
 
 The Lonely Rose . . . -91 
 
 Summer Changes ...... 94 
 
 A Ruined Garden ....... 97 
 
 Sonnets— 
 
 When with thy life thou didst encompass mine . . 103 
 
 The breadth and beauty of the spacious night . 104 
 
 Which is it, Love ? 105 
 
 Her Atmosphere , . . 106 
 
 Love Asleep 107 
 
 Love's Ghost 108 
 
 April .... 109 
 
 My Grave no 
 
 Her in all Things .111 
 
 Of Early Violets 112 
 
 Bells of London 113 
 
 A Country's Ghost . . . . . . . 114 
 
 To all Sad of Heart II5 
 
 To all in Haven . . 116 
 
 P'orecasting ii7 
 
 Friendship and Love . • • 118 
 Here in this sunset splendour desolate . .119 
 
 All round about me is the city's noise . . 120 
 Oh ye who sailed with me . .121
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 IX 
 
 SONMETS, continued — 
 
 Beloved of Her ...... 
 
 Could it but be ..... 
 
 Not only rooms wherein my love has been 
 What wailing wind ..... 
 
 T thought that I was happy yesterday 
 When thou art far from me 
 Four Parables : — 
 
 I. — Height upon Height . 
 H. — About this land moves many a sad-eyed 
 
 ghost ..... 
 
 HI. — I walked one spring day, while yet w 
 were cold .... 
 
 IV. — Before this new Lord came 
 Love's Deserted Palace .... 
 
 Spring and Despair ..... 
 
 Lethargy ....... 
 
 From London Streets ..... 
 
 Out of Sleep 
 
 Resignation ....... 
 
 To-morrow ...... 
 
 Sorrow's Ghost ...... 
 
 London from Far ..... 
 
 Unsheltered Love ...... 
 
 When in the darkness I wake up alone 
 
 A Pra3^er to Sleep 
 
 I walked in Love's deserted room 
 
 To the Spirit of Poetry ..... 
 
 Old Memories 
 
 Good-night and Good-morrow 
 
 inds 
 
 122 
 123 
 124 
 
 126 
 127 
 
 128 
 129 
 
 132 
 
 T33 
 134 
 135 
 136 
 
 137 
 138 
 
 139 
 140 
 141 
 142 
 143 
 144 
 145 
 146 
 
 147
 
 To PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON 
 
 Sweet Poet, thou of whom these years that roll 
 
 Must one day yet the burdened birthright learn, 
 And by the darkness of thine eyes discern 
 
 How piercing was the sight within thy soul ; — 
 
 Gifted, apart, thou goest to the great goal, 
 
 A cloud-bound, radiant spirit, strong to earn. 
 Light-reft, that prize for which fond myriads yearn 
 
 Vainly, light-blest, — the Seer's aureole. 
 
 A nd doth thine ear, divinely dowered to catch 
 All spheral sounds in thy song blent so well. 
 Still hearken for my voice s slumbering spell 
 With wistful love? oh ! let the muse now snatch 
 My wreath for thy young brows, and bend to watch 
 Thy veiled transfiguring sense's miracle. 
 
 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI.
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 OF 
 
 PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON 
 
 ' No ominous hour * 
 
 Knocks at his door with tidings of mishap — 
 Far off is he above desire and fear.' 
 
 TO write of Philip Bourke Marston is " to 
 speak of one at whom, through all his 
 life, Fate seemed to mock ; and yet I have 
 sometimes felt, while reading his noble and 
 beautiful verse, that many a man on whom 
 Destiny has smiled would have considered such 
 inspiration and such achievement as were the 
 consolation of our blind poet cheaply purchased 
 
 at cost of a life of commonplace happiness. 
 
 A
 
 2 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 He was the son of Dr Westland Marston, him- 
 self both a poet and a dramatist, and a hneal 
 descendant of John Marston, the playwright of 
 the sixteenth century. Philip was heir, it would 
 have seemed, to an inheritance of good fortunes. 
 His beautiful dark eyes opened on a world fair 
 with love and hope. Philip James Bailey, the 
 author of ' Festus,' was his godfather ; and Dinah 
 Maria Mulock (Mrs Craik) was his godmother. 
 There were already two sisters — Eleanor and 
 Ciceley— to welcome the baby brother born into 
 their home on the 13th of August 1850. This 
 newcomer was the idol of them all, and he 
 began to be ' Philip, the King,' long before he 
 could speak. 
 
 There were three years during which all the 
 promises of Fate were fair. Then came that 
 accident — a blow received while playing with 
 some little companions — in consequence of which
 
 PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON 3 
 
 I should have said that he wholly lost his sight, 
 save that he has so often insisted to me on the 
 difference between seeing, as he did in his boy- 
 hood, (though dimly as through a mist), the fires 
 that lit the sunset sky, the glow on the winter 
 hearth, the trees waving with the wind's breath, 
 the vague, phantom shapes of men and women 
 walking like ghosts, and seeing, as was the case 
 after he was twenty — nothing. Who can possibly 
 measure the calamity of the loss of vision to a 
 predestined poet ? 
 
 Philip, of course, could never learn to read. 
 His education came to him through the books 
 that were read to him, and the talk of the clever 
 and gifted people who were the guests of the 
 household. There are few homes, indeed, to which 
 such visitors cam^e as to that London house near 
 the Regent's Park, where Browning, and Thackeray, 
 and Dickens, and Rossetti and Swinburne, and the
 
 4 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 best and brightest men and women of the time 
 were frequent visitors. 
 
 Phihp began to write — or rather to dictate to 
 his mother, who was, as long as she Hved, his 
 loving and faithful amanuensis — when he had 
 scarcely outgrown his pinafores ; and by the time 
 he was fifteen he had written some really note- 
 worthy verse that was afterwards included in his 
 first volume. While he was beginning to arrange 
 the poems for this first book, and when he was 
 scarcely twenty, his mother died. He has talked 
 to me sometimes of his passionate sorrow at her 
 loss. He felt, then, as if the whole world ' had 
 gone to pieces'; and for a while after that he 
 could think of nothing but the love that had been, 
 and was not. 
 
 It almost seemed like a miracle of mercy when 
 he met Mary Nesbit; and her sweet young voice 
 lured him back to a fresh interest in this world.
 
 PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON 5 
 
 He loved her, as poets love — suddenly, romantic- 
 ally, and with an adoring and idealizing devotion 
 that at once expressed itself in the fifty-seven 
 sonnets which form the first division of his 
 earliest book — ' Song-Tide, and Other Poems.' 
 The poems — the love — the lover — who knows 
 what ? — touched the girlish heart he sought to 
 win, and moved it to response; and Mary Nesbit 
 pledged herself to share the young poet's darkened 
 life. In 1871 — soon after this betrothal — 'Song- 
 Tide ' was published and dedicated to the memory 
 of Philip's mother. It was an immediate success. 
 The best critics welcomed it with their approval 
 — the Examiner even declared that, by virtue 
 of this volume, the author should ' take an 
 equal place alongside Swinburne, Morris, and 
 Rossetti.' I have seen letters on letters of praise 
 addressed to the young poet from such masters 
 of song as Swinburne and Rossetti. In one of
 
 6 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 these, Rossetti wrote — ' Only yesterday evening 
 I was reading your " Garden Secrets " to William 
 Bell Scott, who fully agreed with me that it is 
 not too much to say of them that they are 
 worthy of Shakespeare in his subtlest lyrical 
 moods.' 
 
 Remembering the long sadness of Marston's 
 life, I love to pause for a moment on just this 
 height of being — to see him, at twenty-one, 
 young, happy even in spite of his misfortunes, 
 loving and beloved, welcomed by noble poets as 
 among their own high kindred, full of eager hope, 
 triumphant, as it seemed, against his fate! But, 
 alas, it was not for long that he stood upon this 
 summit of his fortunes. 
 
 In the November of 187 1 Miss Nesbit died, of 
 swift consumption; and then, indeed, the last 
 gleam of light departed from the eyes that wept 
 for her such bitter tears. Henceforth they beheld
 
 PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON 7 
 
 no more the pageantry of sunset, or the hearth- 
 fire by which he and his sorrow sat, desolate, 
 at night. But no ! I must not speak of him as 
 quite desolate; for Ciceley remained to him. His 
 sister Eleanor was, by this time, married to 
 Arthur O'Shaughnessy, himself a poet; but 
 Ciceley, henceforth, until her own death, gave 
 herself to be eyes and hands for this her stricken 
 brother. It seemed almost as if his heart beat, 
 his brain throbbed, in her body, so entirely was 
 it the business and the pleasure of her life to 
 do his will. 
 
 The house, near Regent's Park, where the 
 family had lived so long, and which during the 
 life-time of Mrs Marston had been the scene of 
 so many brilliant symposia, was given up, and 
 Philip and Ciceley henceforth lived together. 
 They lived in London — wdiich was Philip's birth- 
 place and his lifelong home — but they travelled
 
 8 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 many times to France, and one golden year to 
 Italy — that fair ' woman-country,' which forever 
 after haunted Philip's memory, as for many a 
 longing year it had haunted his dreams. They 
 worked together, too, and no sightless man can 
 ever have been served more faithfully than was 
 Philip while this sister of his mind as well as of 
 his heart was spared to him. 
 
 It was perhaps a year after Miss Nesbit's death 
 when her bereaved lover made the acquaintance 
 of Oliver Madox Brown, the author of 'The 
 Dwale Bluth,' 'The Black Swan,' and several 
 other remarkable tales. He was the son of Ford 
 Madox Brown, the well-known artist, and was 
 himself a painter, as well as a novelist and a 
 poet. His friendship was one of the supreme 
 joys of Marston's life. The two met almost daily; 
 and when anything kept them apart they wrote 
 to each other. They planned conquests of art
 
 PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON 9 
 
 and of literature — they sympathized with each 
 other's ambitions — they were friends, in the 
 uttermost sense of the word. At last Oliver 
 became ill, from blood-poisoning; but though 
 Philip was full of anxiety during his brief illness, 
 the news of his death came with an awful shock 
 of surprise and horror. 
 
 It was in 1874 that Oliver Madox Brown died; 
 and before his sickness he had read some of 
 the proofs and all the manuscript of ' All In 
 All '— Alarston's second volume of poems. ' Song- 
 Tide,' as I said, had been inscribed to the 
 memory of Philip's mother. ' All In All ' was 
 dedicated to his father, though all the poems it 
 contained — with the exception of one to his sister 
 Ciceley, with which the book concluded — were 
 consecrated to the lost love whose young life had 
 been pledged to his own. 
 
 A book so heart-breaking could scarcely win
 
 lo BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 the ear of the pleasure-loving world as had the 
 gayer music of ' Song-Tide,' written when life 
 was at its full. Critics and poets, indeed, appre- 
 ciated the sad dignity, the poignant pathos of 
 ' All In All ' — but the world at large craves 
 sunshine and not shadow. No thoughtful reader, 
 however, could ignore the nobility of many of 
 these poems. I wish that the volume might be 
 reprinted ; but, indeed, I feel that there should 
 be a complete edition of Philip Bourke Marston's 
 Poems, including ' Song-Tide,' 'AH In All,' ' Wind 
 Voices,' and this ' Last Harvest,' gathered from 
 his grave ; for, surely, he was not ' the idle 
 singer of an empty day,' but a poet, rather, who 
 spoke to the deepest hearts of men, and whose 
 words have a claim upon our hallowing 
 memory. 
 
 His life was eventful only in its sorrows and in 
 its friendships. He was but fourteen years old
 
 PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON ii 
 
 when he was first taken to see Swinburne, and 
 at that time — wonderful as the achievement seems 
 — he actually knew by heart the whole of the 
 First Series of ' Poems and Ballads.' The friend- 
 ship begun on tliat memorable day was a pride 
 and a joy to Marston for all the rest of his life. 
 Later on he came also to know intimately 
 Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and to love him with 
 adoring enthusiasm. One of Rossetti's latest 
 sonnets was addressed to Marston. William 
 Sharp, poet and novelist ; Herbert E. Clarke, 
 the poet ; Theodore Watts, himself a poet, and 
 the best critic of poetry who is writing at present ; 
 Coulson Kernahan, the brilliant young author 
 of ' A Dead INIan's Diary ' ; C. Churchill Osborne, 
 the Hon. Roden Noel, A. Mary F. Robinson, 
 Olive Schreiner, Iza DuflFus Hardy, Mrs W. 
 K. Clifford, E. Nesbit — these were a few, only, 
 of the group of literary friends who cheered with
 
 12 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 their sympalhy and appreciation the last sad years 
 of Marston's darkened Hfe. 
 
 I, myself, first met him in 1876, on the first 
 day of July — ^just six weeks before his twenty- 
 sixth birthday. He was tall, slight, and in spite 
 of his blindness, graceful. He seemed to me 
 young-looking even for his twenty-six years. He 
 had a noble and beautiful forehead. His brown 
 eyes were perfect in shape, and even in colour, 
 save for a dimness like a white mist that obscured 
 the pupil, but which you perceived only when 
 you were quite near to him. His hair and beard 
 were dark brown, with warm glints of chestnut ; 
 and the colour came and went in his cheeks as 
 in those of a sensitive girl. His face was singu- 
 larly refined, but his lips were full and pleasure- 
 loving, and suggested dumbly how cruel must be 
 the limitations of blindness to a nature hungry 
 for love and for beauty. I had been greatly
 
 PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON 13 
 
 interested, before seeing him, in his poems, and 
 to meet him was a memorable deUght. 
 
 He and the sister who was his inseparable 
 companion soon became my close friends, and 
 with them both this friendship lasted till the 
 end. 
 
 In Ciceley's case the ' end ' was not far distant. 
 She came to see me, on the morning of July 28th, 
 1878, and complained, when she came in, that her 
 head ached ' desperately.' I persuaded her to lie 
 down ; but, suddenly, she sprang to her feet, 
 called my name, and fell back again, stricken 
 with the ' foudroyant apoplexy' of which she died 
 in the mid-afternoon of that same day. Philip 
 and his father were travelling in France, just 
 then ; and as they were moving from place to 
 place on their homeward way, wc did not even 
 know where to reach them with a telegram. 
 They returned to London, therefore, in utter
 
 14 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 ignorance of their loss, to find the daughter and 
 sister so beloved awaiting her burial. 
 
 I have always felt that this was the cruellest 
 bereavement of Marston's life. When his mother, 
 his betrothed, and his friend died, in sad and 
 swift succession, there had always been Ciceley 
 to comfort and console him. But when Ciceley 
 went, there was no such survivor. His other 
 sister was not only married, but was even then 
 a chronic invalid. His father's health, also, was 
 broken ; and devoted as he was to his son, he 
 could not give him what Ciceley had given him 
 of day-long companionship and constant service. 
 It was after this loss of his sister that many of 
 the new friends I have mentioned came into 
 Philip's life ; and to the list might be added 
 various Americans, such as Mrs Laura Curtis 
 Bullard, and three of our well-known poets, 
 Edmund Clarence Stedman (who had spoken of
 
 PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON 15 
 
 Marston with earnest appreciation in his ' Victorian 
 Poets,') Richard Watson Gilder, and the Southern 
 poet, Paul Hamilton Hayne. From this time 
 forth, a large proportion of Marston's work, both 
 in prose and verse, was published in America, 
 and won a wide audience among the best American 
 readers. 
 
 As years went on he needed the comfort of 
 friendship more than ever, for sorrow upon 
 sorrow assailed him. His sister Eleanor died in 
 the February of 1879 ; and his brother-in-law, 
 Arthur O'Shaughnessy in the January of 1881. 
 In the April of 1882 Dante Gabriel Rossetti — 
 the enthusiasm of the blind poet's life — died in 
 his turn, and in a sonnet to his memory 
 Marston spoke of him as transcending all other 
 men, and leading ' the train of love.' 
 
 Marston's third volume of poems — ' Wind 
 Voices' — was published in 1883; by Eliot Stock,
 
 1 6 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 in London, and by Roberts Brothers, in America. 
 It was certainly a distinct advance on the two 
 preceding volumes in variety, and on the whole 
 in strength; though no lyric in it surpassed 'The 
 Wind and the Rose,' and perhaps no sonnet 
 excelled two or three that might be selected 
 from the previous volumes. That ' Wind Voices ' 
 was dedicated to myself, as a proof of its author's 
 friendship, does not, T am sure, affect my judg- 
 ment of it. T am convinced that it contains 
 work which generations to come will value, as 
 we value now the lovely legacies of song 
 bequeathed to us by singers of old days. Un- 
 happily it was not stereotyped, and the edition 
 was swiftly exhausted. The best critics in 
 England and in America reviewed it with such 
 cordial praise that I like to remember the 
 pleasure their words gave to him whose pleasures 
 in those days were so few.
 
 PHIL TP BO URKE MA PS TON 1 7 
 
 From that very time — the autumn of 1883 — 
 Marston's health began sensibly and visibly to 
 decline. He was gay, still, when his friends were 
 with him; for no man ever confronted the 
 sorrows of his life more bravely, or made less 
 claim on the compassion of his fellows. He 
 wrote once : — 
 
 Of me ye may say many a bitter thing, 
 
 Men, when I am gone, gone far away, 
 
 To that dim Land where shines no light of day. 
 Sharp was the bread for my soul's nourishing 
 Which Fate allowed, and bitter was the spring 
 
 Of which I drank and maddened, even as they 
 Who wild with thirst at sea will not delay. 
 But drink the brine and die of its sharp sting. 
 
 Not gentle was my war wuth Chance, and yet 
 
 1 borrowed no man's sword — alone I drew, 
 And gave my slain fit burial out of view. 
 
 In secret places I and Sorrow met — 
 So when you count my sins, do not forget 
 To say I ta.xed not any one of 3'ou. 
 
 This sonnet was no idle boast. He had a 
 delicate pride that always led him to prefer to
 
 i8 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 confer favours rather than to receive them. 
 Many of the sonnets in ' Wind Voices ' were 
 self- revealing to a degree that only those who 
 knew him well could fully divine. In one — 'A 
 Question' — he asks himself whether the pre- 
 vision of Death would have been ghastlier, had 
 Life been full for him of joy; and he answers 
 his own question thus : — 
 
 Harder seems this — to die and leave the sun, 
 And carry hence each unfulfilled desire. 
 I heard one crj-, ' Come where the feast is spread,' 
 
 But when I came the festival was done : 
 
 Somewhile I shivered by the extinguished fire 
 And now retrace my steps uncomforted. 
 
 And, once again, he wrote : — 
 
 Still the old paths, and the old solitude, 
 And still the dark soul journeying on its way. 
 
 The journey was not to be long; yet the 
 three years after the publication of ' Wind
 
 PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON 19 
 
 Voices' were so full of loneliness and of sad- 
 ness that I cannot bear to think of them — though 
 always and up to the very last, he could be 
 blithe whenever there was anyone with whom 
 to make merry ; and small things sufficed to 
 please and cheer him. He founded, during those 
 years, a Club, to which he gave the name of 
 ' The Vagabonds,' which used to meet for a 
 monthly evening. This club survives him. It 
 is 'The Vagabonds' still; and there have been 
 numerous additions to its members. Marston's 
 memory is its religion. 
 
 Philip clung, if possible, more closely than ever 
 to his friends, because a low voice was forever 
 whispering in his ear that his time for friend- 
 ship was brief. He often said to me that his 
 future would be short — but I could never quite 
 believe it. How could I think that with so much 
 affluence of life in the world it would be snatched
 
 20 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 from these young lips that thirsted for it so 
 eagerly ? 
 
 In the autumn of 1886, while in Brighton with 
 his father, he was stricken with brain fever, and 
 one of his delusions was that from his window 
 (which looked upon a stone-paved yard), he could 
 see great ships, with all their white sails set, 
 sailing, all of them, to America, whither he had 
 always hoped to go. ' They will stop for me, 
 soon,' he used often to say. A ship stopped for 
 him soon, indeed — too soon — but it was to bear 
 him to a farther shore than the one of which he 
 dreamed — over a sea unfathomed, to a port un- 
 known. 
 
 I saw him in the autumn after this illness ; 
 and I was curiously and painfully struck with 
 the vividness of his memory of long past things 
 and his frequent forgetfulness of the engagements 
 and the interests of the day. How often he said —
 
 PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON 21 
 
 ' Why should I want to live ? I really do not 
 know why ; but I shrink from that great mystery 
 beyond. If I only knew ! ' 
 
 Through the winter of 1876-7 his letters — 
 which came to me regularly, almost until the 
 end — were far more brief than usual, and inex- 
 pressibly sad. He wrote that he was too weak 
 to sit long at the type-writer, which, after Ciceley's 
 death, he had learned to use for himself. How 
 unutterably pathetic those mid-winter letters seem 
 to me, when I recall them now ! How they come 
 back to me — vain cries out of the dark ! ' If I 
 only could sleep ! ' he wrote, again and again — 
 and now sleep laps him round. 
 
 It was in the last of January that he experienced 
 what then seemed only a slight shock of paralysis. 
 On the first day of February he telegraphed his 
 friend Herbert Clarke to come to him. Ev^en 
 then he could only speak with great difficulty.
 
 2 2 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 though he managed to say that he wanted to Hve, 
 and hoped to get better. After that day he never 
 spoke at all. His father wrote me how agonizing 
 were his attempts to make himself understood ; 
 but this was at first. After a few days he gave 
 up the struggle, and subsided into a gentle 
 quietude, until, at last, ' he almost slept into 
 Eternity.' 
 
 He died in the morning of February 14th, 1887. 
 Had he lived till the 13th of the next August, he 
 would have been thirty-seven years old. He was 
 buried at Highgate Cemetery on the i8th of 
 February. It was a grey and foggy day — as if 
 the Earth, herself, were in mourning for him, her 
 lover. Many friends wrote me how strangely 
 beautiful was the dead poet's face ; and one of 
 them spoke of its extraordinary likeness to Severn's 
 portrait of Keats. The coffin was heaped with 
 wreaths of flowers, sent by friends near and far.
 
 PHILIP nOURKE MARSTON 23 
 
 Even before his funeral — on the very day after 
 his death — Swinburne had written so memorable 
 an expression of his sorrow for his friend's loss 
 that I must quote it here : — 
 
 The d:iys of a man are threescore and ten. 
 
 The days of his life were half a man's, whom we 
 Lament, and would yet not bid him back to be 
 
 Partaker of all the woes and ways of men. 
 
 Life sent him enough of sorrow : not again 
 
 Would anguish of love, beholding him set free, 
 Bring back the beloved to suffer life, and see 
 
 No light but the fire of grief that scathed him then. 
 
 We know not at all : we hope and do not fear. 
 
 We shall not again behold him, late so near, 
 Who now from afar above, with eyes alight 
 
 And spirit enkindled, haply toward us here 
 
 Looks down, unforgetful yet, of days like night 
 And love that has yet his sightless face in sight. 
 
 Theodore Watts quoted, in the Athauvum^ 
 this tribute of Swinburne's, enshrining it in 
 a prose memorial of his own, so beautiful that 
 by no one who read it could it be forgotten.
 
 24 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 The illustrated papers published Marston's likeness, 
 accompanied by sketches of his sad and too 
 brief life. Praises were lavished on his work, 
 as flowers had been upon his tomb; and he — he, 
 who had so loved the sympathy and appreciation 
 of his fellow men — was he deaf to it all, T wonder, 
 down there where he was laid ? 
 
 He had always so welcomed the spring — had 
 sung its praises Iti so many a rhyme — and now 
 the spring came on apace without him. As his 
 friend Clarke wrote, in a 'Monody' too long for 
 quotation here : — 
 
 The Marcli wind bufftts the blithe daffodils 
 
 Snowdrop and crocus the rough season dare ; 
 A rumour of vague joy is on the hills, 
 
 Gladness of expectation holds the air; 
 
 And in the bright cold sunshine forth I fare. 
 And lo ! a silent shadow at my side — 
 
 A s id and silent shadow everywhere, 
 Like to another self, goes stride for stride, 
 
 A wraith that with its desolate presence fills 
 The year's house, bare and wide.
 
 PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON 25 
 
 I Lhiiik that others, who were Phihp's friends, 
 recognise, sometimes, this silent shadow at our 
 side. It almost seems as if he were but veiled 
 from us by some unfriendly cloud, and that he 
 must know, still, all that concerns his fame, yes — 
 even these poor words I write. 
 
 He had published a good many stories — he 
 used to call them his pot-boilers ; and after his 
 death a volume of them was collected by his 
 friend, William Sharp, and published under the 
 title of ' For a Song's Sake, and Other Stories.' 
 Some of these tales are so original and so clever 
 as to persuade us that a veritable and note-worthy 
 success in fiction might have been easily possible 
 to him had the conditions of his life been more 
 favourable. Such stories as, for instance, 'Miss 
 Stotford's Specialty,' and ' Bryanstone and Wife,' 
 justify the praise that has been bestowed on 
 Marston's prose by so note-worthy a critic as
 
 26 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 Edmund Clarence Stedman. It is always the 
 prose of a poet. Looking at his published and 
 his unpublished work — a manuscript novel (his 
 first attempt at fiction) ; his stories short and 
 long, his brief essays, his critical reviews (chiefly 
 published in the Athenanun), and his many poems, 
 I ai7i filled with amazement at the numerous and 
 varied achievements of this young and blind 
 man who fought his battle of life against such 
 terrible odds. 
 
 Two other books, beside the volume of his 
 stories, have been compiled from Marston's works 
 since his death. For the first of these two — 
 ' Garden Secrets ' — T am myself responsible. It 
 had long been a favourite project of Marston's 
 to publish, sometime, as he used to say, ' a little 
 book,' with only the Garden poems in it — the 
 secrets the flowers had whispered to him. With 
 this his long-cherished wish in mind, I arranged
 
 PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON 27 
 
 the volume, in the spring after his death, and it 
 was published — in 1887 — by Roberts Brothers, 
 Boston. Later on Mr Sharp compiled for publi- 
 cation in the ' Canterbury Poets ' series, a book of 
 selections from Marston's three previously printed 
 volumes of poems. It represents his work fairly 
 enough, perhaps, for the general reader; but does 
 not, in my opinion, detract from the desirableness 
 of a complete edition of all the verse which is this 
 poet's legacy to the world. The present volume — 
 ' A Last Harvest ' is composed of poems not in- 
 cluded in the previous books. They were the 
 fruit of the three sad, last years of Marston's 
 life. They are not wholly sad, however — though, 
 in those last years, sadness rested upon him like a 
 pall. Even those who are happy may care, some- 
 times, to listen to the passion and the pathos of 
 a sorrow they themselves have never known ; 
 and to the heavy of heart there is a gleam of
 
 28 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 comfort in the knowledge that other hearts 
 have ached with a kindred pain — that they are 
 not pioneers in the desolate path of grief. 
 Swinburne was not at fault, when he wrote, in 
 that February darkened by Marston's death — 
 
 ' Thy song ma}* soothe full many a soul hereafter.' 
 
 But indeed, I must quote the whole of the 
 noble poem, which though written almost before 
 the sod had been heaped upon Philip's grave, 
 appeared, for the first time, in the Fortnightly 
 Review for January, 1891. 
 
 LIGHT: AN EPICEDE 
 TO PHILir EOURKE MARSTON 
 
 Love will not weep because the seal is broken 
 That sealed upon a life beloved and brief 
 
 Darkness, and let but song break through for token 
 How deep, too far for even thy song's relief, 
 Slept in thy soul the secret springs of grief.
 
 PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON 29 
 
 Thy song may soothe full many a soul hereafter, 
 As tears, if tears will come, dissolve despair ; 
 
 As here but late, with smile more bright than laughter. 
 Thy sweet, strange, yearning eyes would seem to bear 
 Witness that joy might cleave the clouds of care. 
 
 Ten days agone, and love was one with pity 
 
 When love gave thought wings towards the glimmering goal 
 Where, as a shrine lit in some darkling city. 
 
 Shone soft the shrouded image of thy soul ; 
 
 And now thou art healed of life, art healed and whole. 
 
 Yea, two days since, all we that loved thee pitied ; 
 And now with wondering love, with shame of face. 
 
 We think how foolish now, how far unfitted 
 
 Should be from us, toward thee who hast run thy race, 
 Pity — toward thee, who hast won the pitiless place : 
 
 The painless world of death, yet unbeholden 
 
 Of eyes that dream what light now lightens thine 
 
 And will not weep. Thought yearning toward those olden, 
 Dear hours that sorrow sees, and sees not shine, 
 Bows tearless down before a flameless shrine. 
 
 A flameless altar here of love and sorrow 
 
 Quenched and consumed together. These were one. 
 One thing for thee, as night was one with morrow, 
 
 And utter darkness with the sovereign sun ; 
 
 And now thou seest life, sorrow and darkness done.
 
 30 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 And 3-et love yearns again to win thiee hither ; 
 Blind love, and loveless, and unworthy thee ; 
 
 Here where I watch the hours of darkness wither, 
 Here where mine eyes were glad and sad to see 
 Thine that could see not mine, though turned on me. 
 
 But now, if aught beyond sweet sleep lie hidden, 
 And sleep be sealed not fast on dead men's sight 
 
 Forever, thine hath grace for ours forbidden, 
 
 And sees as compassed round with change and night ; 
 Yet light like thine is ours if love be light. 
 
 If the dead know anything, then surely this 
 poem, written by a poet who had been the very 
 carHcst object of Marston's boyish enthusiasm, 
 must have thrilled his silent heart to pride and joy. 
 And if the dead know anything, warm indeed 
 must have been the welcome which Dr West- 
 land Marston received — on the fifth of January, 
 1890 — from the son who had preceded him to 
 the Stranger's Country by a month less than 
 three years. Few fathers, surely, ever mourned 
 for a son as that father mourned. His days and
 
 PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON 31 
 
 nights were passed in seeking for some sign 
 that the dead had not forgotten him. And 
 sometimes, in answer to his yearning, he seemed 
 to hear a voice, to which all other ears were 
 deaf, that whispered to him, from out the 
 unknown world, of love that was immortal. 
 
 Father, mother, sisters and brother — surely 
 they are all together, now, somewhere. For them 
 is peace after tumult — rest after weariness — plenty 
 after famine . to us the memory of a joy and 
 a sorrow — the echo of a song. 
 
 Louise Chandler AIoultox. 
 
 Jiih\ 1891.
 
 LYRICS 
 
 c
 
 LYRICS 
 
 "^K— 
 
 LOVE'S LOST PLEASURE-HOUSE 
 
 Love built for himself a Pleasurc-House- 
 A Pleasure-House fair to see — 
 
 The roof was gold, and the walls thereof 
 Were delicate ivory. 
 
 Violet crystal the windows were, 
 All gleaming and fair to see — 
 
 Pillars of rose-stained marble up-bore 
 
 That house where men longed to be.
 
 36 A LAST HARVEST 
 
 Violet, golden, and white and rose. 
 That Pleasure-House fair to see 
 
 Did show to all, and they gave Love thanks 
 For work of such mastery. 
 
 Love turned away from his Pleasure-House, 
 And stood by the salt deep sea — 
 
 He looked therein, and he flung therein 
 Of his treasure the only key. 
 
 Now never a man till time be done 
 That Pleasure-House fair to see 
 
 Shall fill with music and merriment, 
 Or praise it on bended knee.
 
 A LAST HARVEST 37 
 
 LOVE'S LADY 
 
 To-day, as when we sat together close, 
 
 A great wind wakes and thunders as it blows — 
 
 We were together then beside the sea, 
 And now instead the sea between us flows. 
 
 O day that found us on that wind-swept coast, 
 And did such brave things for the future boast — 
 Though in thy voice a note of warning was — 
 This day, so like thee, seems thy very ghost ! 
 
 O parted, precious, memorable days. 
 When sudden summer kindled all my ways, 
 
 When Love reached out his blessing hand to mc, 
 And turned on mine the glory of his face !
 
 38 A LAST HARVEST 
 
 And thou, my Love, in whose deep soul my soul 
 Lay for a little season and grew whole — 
 
 Thou who wert heat and light and sun and shade- 
 Thou who didst lead me to Life's fairest goal — 
 
 Whose sweetest lips Love, kissing, made to sing — 
 Ah, at what bright unfathomable spring 
 
 Was thy life nurtured, in the far-off land 
 Through which the unborn host go wandering ? 
 
 In stately body God thy soul did clothe — 
 
 Thy perfect soul — that so thou mightst have both 
 
 To take away the hearts of men, withal ; 
 And tenderness to strength He did betroth ; 
 
 And in thy beautiful and luminous eyes 
 'I'he wayward changefulness of April skies 
 
 He set for sovereign charm ; and made thy voice 
 A sweet and a perpetual surprise.
 
 A LAST HARVEST 39 
 
 Alas, what song of mine can demonstrate 
 
 The love that came between me and my fate — 
 
 That would have saved me from despair and Doom 
 Had Destiny but been compassionate? 
 
 As high as Heaven it was, deep as the sea, 
 And mystical and pure as lilies be, 
 
 And glowing with the glory of the June, 
 When birds and flowers and light make revelry. 
 
 Steadfast it was, as stars whereby men steer — 
 Tender as twilight, when the moon is near 
 And all the gentle air is warm with hope. 
 And we the Simimer's hastening feet can hear. 
 
 How can my single, singing strength suffice 
 To worship thee, my Love, my Paradise ? 
 
 My song falls weak before thee, and abashed, 
 Nor ever to thy spirit's height may rise ;
 
 40 A LAST HARVEST 
 
 Yet even by its failure men shall see 
 
 How more than all loves was my love of thee — 
 
 Thou, who didst overflow my life with Heaven 
 Making that life Love's miracle to be ! 
 
 And, though my little note of music pass 
 As barren breath one breathes upon a glass. 
 
 And I be numbered with the numberless throng 
 Of whom men say not, even, ' This man was,' 
 
 O yet, from thee, in whom all beauty blent. 
 
 My Rose of women, from thy heart there went — 
 
 From thy deep, splendid, perfect, passionate heart- 
 A love to be, in death, my monument I
 
 A LAST HARVEST \i 
 
 ALAS! 
 
 Alas for all high hopes and all desires ! 
 
 Like leaves in yellow autumn-time they fall — 
 
 Alas for prayers and psalms and love's pure fires- 
 One silence and one darkness ends them all ! 
 
 Alas for all the world — sad fleeting race ! 
 
 Alas, my Love, for you and me Alas ! 
 Grim Death will clasp us in his close embrace 
 
 We, too, like all the rest from earth must pass. 
 
 Alas to think we must forget some hours 
 
 Whereof the memory like Love's planet glows- 
 Forget them as the year her withered flowers — 
 Forget them as the June forgets the rose !
 
 42 A LAST HARVEST 
 
 Our keenest rapture, our most deep despair, 
 
 Our hopes, our dreads, our laughter, and our tears 
 
 Shall be no more at all upon the air — 
 
 No more at all, through all the endless years. 
 
 We shall be mute beneath the grass and dew 
 
 In that dark Kingdom where Death reigns in state- 
 
 And you will be as I, and I as you — 
 One silence shed upon us, and one fate.
 
 A LAST HARVEST 43 
 
 MY LIFE PUTS FORTH TO SEA ALONE 
 
 My life puts forth to sea alone ; 
 The skies are dark above ; 
 
 All round I hear grey waters moan- 
 Alas for vanished love ! 
 
 ' O lonely life that presseth on 
 Across these wastes of years — 
 Where are the guiding pilots gone- 
 Whose is the hand that steers ? ' 
 
 The pilots they are left behind 
 Upon yon golden strand ; 
 
 We drift before the driving wind ; 
 We cannot miss the land —
 
 44 A LAST HARVEST 
 
 That land to which we hurry on 
 
 Across the angry years ; 
 Hope being dead, and sweet Love gone, 
 
 There is no hand that steers.
 
 A LAST HARVEST 45 
 
 FLOWN LOVE 
 
 So far Love has flown we cannot find him ; 
 
 All joy is past : 
 We may not follow, regain and bind him, 
 
 He flies so fast. 
 
 ' And where has Love flown, if flown he be ? 
 Can you not say ? 
 Across what mountains, and over what sea ? 
 Which way ? which way ? ' 
 
 O'er viewless mountains and seas you know not, 
 
 To lands unknown, 
 Where winds are still, and where waters flow not: 
 
 There has Love flown.
 
 46 A LAST HARVEST 
 
 ' And when did Love leave you alone, alone ? 
 Heart, say this thing.' 
 In the autumn-time, when the wet winds moan, 
 And dead leaves cling ; 
 
 When the night was wildest, the sky most black, 
 
 At dead of night, 
 Right into the wind, on his trackless track, 
 
 Love took his flight. 
 
 ' Oh wait till the summer the earth redeems 
 
 From winter's spell : 
 Then Love shall return and fulfil your dreams, 
 And all be well.' 
 
 Nay, Love shall not come with the lengthening 
 light— 
 
 O Love flown far, 
 Right into the land, deep into the night 
 
 That knows no star.
 
 A LAST HARVES7 47 
 
 A BAGATELLE 
 
 Not all the roses God hath made 
 
 Can love the sun aright : 
 The white rose is too chastely staid 
 
 To praise his warmth and light — 
 But great red roses, they can love 
 With their deep hearts their king above. 
 
 Nor nightingales by night that sing 
 
 Can love alike the moon ; 
 Nor all the flowers that come with Spring 
 
 Can praise aright her boon — 
 One nightingale most feels Night's power, 
 And Spring is dearest to one flower.
 
 48 A LAST HARVEST 
 
 Not all the gulls that skim the sea 
 
 Delight alike in storm ; 
 And never man, Sweetheart, to thee 
 
 Gave love so true and warm 
 As mine, that Heaven ordained on high 
 To worship thee until I die.
 
 A LAST HARVEST 49 
 
 A CASTLE IN SPAIN 
 
 To that country fair and far, 
 Where so many castles are, 
 
 Go, Song, on thy way ! 
 Grand my castle once to see — 
 Home of light and revelry — 
 
 What is it to-day ? 
 
 Round its turrets, fallen, lonely, 
 Dreams and songs now wander only, 
 
 Dreams and saddest song : 
 Dreary looks it in the noonlight — 
 Ghosts possess it in the moonlight, 
 
 When the night is long.
 
 A LAST HARVEST 
 
 O my castle, fallen, lowly, 
 Fittest home for melancholy, 
 
 Sad, deserted place ; 
 In your cold and crumbling halh 
 Never now her footstep falls — 
 
 Never smiles her face !
 
 A LAST HARVEST 51 
 
 A SONG FOR TWILIGHT 
 
 Now the winds a-wailing go 
 Through the sere forsaken trees; 
 
 Now the day is waxing low, 
 And above the troubled seas 
 Faint stars glimmer, and the breeze 
 
 Hovers, sad with memories. 
 
 Now the time to part has come, 
 What is left for us to say ? 
 
 Shall we wander sad and dumb 
 
 Down this garden's leaf-strewn way. 
 Or by tossing waves and grey 
 Hand in hand together stray ?
 
 52 A LAST HARVEST 
 
 In this garden shall we stand, 
 In the day's departing light, — 
 
 Here, where first I touched your hand 
 On that unforgotten night 
 When you stood, 'mid roses bright. 
 Dream, embodied to the sight ? 
 
 Where we met, Love, shall we part ? 
 In this garden shall we twain. 
 
 Mouth to mouth, as heart to heart, 
 Loving turn, and kiss again — 
 In this garden shall we drain 
 Love's last bitter-sweet, and pain ? 
 
 Nay, Love, let us leave this place ; 
 
 Let us go, Dear, to the beach 
 Where in happy summer days. 
 
 Sleeping Love awoke to speech ; 
 
 And his voice though low, could reach 
 
 To the deepest heart of each.
 
 A LAST HARVEST 53 
 
 There the sea-winds drifting sweet 
 
 From some strange land far away, 
 And the blown waves as they meet 
 
 One another in the bay — 
 
 These together haply may 
 
 Hint some word for us to say. 
 
 Let us kiss, then, Dear, and go 
 
 Down together to the sea; 
 We will kiss, Dear, meeting so. 
 
 In the days that are to be . . . 
 
 If my heart should then be free, 
 
 If you should remember me !
 
 A LAST HARVEST 
 
 THE RIVER 
 
 Suggested by the Fifteenth Prelude of Chopin 
 
 Thk river flows forever — 
 The moon upon it shines — 
 
 One walks beside the river 
 
 With heart that longs and pines 
 
 A breeze moves on the river, 
 The moon shakes in its flow — 
 
 He grieves and grieves forever, 
 For days of long ago. 
 
 The softly lapsing river, 
 
 It whispers in its flow 
 Of dear days gone forever, 
 
 Those days of long ago.
 
 A LAST HARVEST 55 
 
 He listens to the river, 
 
 A spirit seems to say — 
 ' Forever, Love, forever, •. 
 
 Some day, some blessed day ! ' 
 
 Between the moon and river 
 
 The spirit seems to glide- 
 He cries — ' To-night, forever, 
 
 I'll clasp thee, O my bride ! ' 
 
 And the happy pilgrim river. 
 
 As it journeys toward the sea, 
 Sings, ' Ever and forever. 
 
 Together they shall be ! '
 
 56 A LAST HARVEST 
 
 LOVE'S FLYING FEET 
 
 O FOLLOW Love's flying feet — 
 
 They're fleet as the Wind's and fleeter — 
 O honey indeed is sweet, 
 
 But the kisses of Love are sweeter. 
 
 O hark to the voice of Love ! 
 
 The song of the lark as he rises, 
 Or the cry of the bird in a grove 
 
 That the light of a brooklet surprises 
 
 Is not so glad as Love's voice — 
 
 That voice that of all things is gladdest- 
 For it whispers of delicate joys, 
 
 And of raptures dearest and maddest.
 
 A LAST HARVEST 57 
 
 O look in Love's eyes that shine, 
 
 Alight with the whole world's splendour : 
 They are stars, intense and divine, 
 
 In a passionate heaven and tender. 
 
 O worship Love while you may — 
 
 For never a love-dream may follow, 
 
 Where, hid from the light of the day, 
 
 Man sleeps in his small earth-hollow.
 
 58 A LAST HARVEST 
 
 TO SLEEP 
 
 Ah stay, dear Sleep, a little longer yet, 
 Though Day be come to chase thee — 
 
 And let me in thy sheltering arms forget — 
 Dear Sleep, once more embrace mc ! 
 
 The time will come when thou and I must part, 
 
 Rut now, Beloved, linger, 
 And soothe once more the sad and weary heart 
 
 Of me, thy lover and singer ! 
 
 Dear Comforter, who reigncst undefiled — 
 
 Within thy kingdom holy 
 The weary man is even as a child — 
 
 The lofty as the lowly —
 
 A LAST HARVEST 59 
 
 Ah, when our nuptial day shall dawn on high — 
 
 With nuptial love-fires lighted — 
 Then I for ever in thine arms shall lie, 
 
 By no fresh grief affrighted.
 
 6o A LAST HARVEST 
 
 LOVERS 
 
 O WHAT does the Night-wind say to the rose ? 
 Alas, there is nev^er a heart that knows — 
 O what does the nightingale there in the brake 
 Sing to his love, as he sings for her sake ? 
 
 Be glad there is never an ear to discover — 
 
 O sweet wind lover, O sweet bird lover ! 
 
 Your secret is safe, as mine own shall be 
 
 When the lips that I love have breathed it to me.
 
 A LAST HARVEST 6i 
 
 A REMEMBERED TUNE 
 
 My hand strayed o'er the piano keys, 
 
 And it chanced on a song that you sang, my dear, 
 When we roamed through the country stilhiesses, 
 
 Or stood by the sea, when the moon was clear, 
 In that other year. 
 
 I forget the words you were wont to sing, 
 But the tune was a sweet and a tender one, 
 
 And sad as the thought of youth and Spring 
 To him who dreams, in the fading sun, 
 That the sweet time's done. 
 
 As I play, old hopes and old sorrows move, 
 Till it almost seems that your voice I hear,
 
 62 A LAST HARVEST 
 
 And my spirit goes forth, to-day, to rove 
 
 Down the inland ^^ay where the sea was near, 
 In that other year. 
 
 As a bird that finds its nest 
 
 When the winds are overstrong, 
 With quivering wings and panting breast, 
 
 Even so to-day this song 
 Which your dear Hps used to sing, 
 
 From the days long left behind 
 Enters now, and folds its wing 
 
 In the still, remembering mind.
 
 A LAST HARVEST 63 
 
 AFTER LOVE'S PASSING 
 
 The awful stillness in two human souls 
 
 Whence Love has passed away, 
 The dreary night no moon of joy controls 
 
 The undelightful day — 
 
 The cruel coldness where was once Love's heat, 
 
 The darkness where was light, 
 The burning tearless eyes, the weary feet 
 
 That journey day and night — 
 
 The long dark way that has no end but one — 
 
 That goal no man may miss — 
 The winds that wail about the sunken sun 
 
 For life's departed bliss —
 
 64 A LAST HARVEST 
 
 The fearful loneliness that comes between 
 
 Those souls erst one, now twain — 
 The passionate memory of what has been; 
 
 The unavailing pain — 
 
 The springs that come, but bring no hope of change; 
 
 The cheerless, summer hours; 
 With songs of birds grown old, and harsh, and strange, 
 
 And scentless, bloomless flowers — 
 
 The fruitless autumn, with no garnered corn, 
 
 The dreary, winter weather — 
 The two who walk apart, alone, forlorn, 
 
 Who once kept step together — 
 
 The bitter sense of failure and regret, 
 
 The life without an aim. 
 The unavailing struggle to forget 
 
 The weakness, owned with shame —
 
 A LAST HARVEST 65 
 
 These things make sad the night and sad tlie day, 
 
 And hard are they to bear- 
 Yet let those souls whence Love has passed away 
 
 Though sad, keep pure and fair : 
 
 Ah, let them say, ' Great Love once tarried here 
 
 Making his home divine — 
 Though he has passed, yet let us still hold dear 
 
 The temple and the shrine.' 
 
 E
 
 66 A LAST HARVEST 
 
 A QUESTION 
 
 Once at this window, touched by climbing boughs 
 Whose plenteous leaves were quivering listlessly 
 
 With some least breath of wind, through the still house, 
 Borne from the dim, remote old library, 
 
 I heard the organ's music, slow, profound, 
 
 A moon-thrilled, travelling twilight of sweet sound. 
 Sad as the last breath of the leaves that lie 
 
 Thick, dead, and autumn-coloured on the ground. 
 
 To-day a child with eager hands will try 
 
 To gain the secret of the organ's soul. 
 And waking it to simple melody 
 
 Smile with fond pride to think he has the whole : —
 
 A LAST HARVEST 67 
 
 Shall I, who know of old the stops and keys, 
 The pain and longing, the regret and peace 
 That stronger fingers waken and control, 
 Hurt his young heart by mocking him with these ?
 
 68 A LAST HARVEST 
 
 HEART-BREAKS AND SONGS 
 
 Heart-brkaks and songs- 
 Fate, leave us these — 
 
 Since no man prolongs 
 Love's joy and peace. 
 
 Summer was fair, 
 
 Though it was fleet — 
 Cold now the air — 
 
 No breath is sweet. 
 
 Faint is tlie sun — 
 Roses are dead — 
 
 Lingers not one, 
 
 Dear, for your head.
 
 A LAST HARVEST 69 
 
 Heart-breaks and songs — 
 
 Fate leave us these — 
 Since no man prolongsi 
 
 Love's joy and peace.
 
 70 A LAST HARVEST 
 
 LOOKING FORWARD, IN FEBRUARY 
 
 I LOOK across the brief, remaining space 
 
 Of chill and wintry days, 
 Till March to sprinkle violets shall begin, 
 
 And snow-drops white and thin. 
 
 I look through April, quick with scent and song, 
 
 To where the shining throng 
 Of laughing, garlanded May days come on, 
 
 With large light of the sun. 
 
 I look to June — fair flower of all the year — 
 
 O month of months appear ! 
 O ardours of the summer time come close, 
 
 With nightingale and rose !
 
 A LAST HARVEST 71 
 
 Make haste to come, O time of all delight — 
 
 Bright day, and tender night — 
 For then shall I within a Heaven dwell 
 
 Whose name Love may not tell.
 
 72 A LAST HARVEi^T 
 
 HER PITY 
 
 This is the room to which she came that day — 
 Came when the dusk was falHng cold and grey — 
 Came with soft step, in delicate array, 
 
 And sat beside me in the firelight there : 
 And like a rose of perfume rich and rare 
 Thrilled with her sweetness the environing air. 
 
 We heard the grind of traffic in the street — 
 The clamorous calls — the beat of passing feet — 
 The wail of bells that in the twilight meet. 
 
 Then I knelt down, and dared to touch her hand- 
 
 Those slender fingers, and the shining band 
 
 Of happy gold wherewith her wrist was spanned.
 
 A LAST HARVEST 73 
 
 Her radiant beauty made my heart rejoice ; 
 And then she spoke, and her low pitying voice 
 Was hke the soft, pathetic, tender noise 
 
 Of winds that come before a summer rain : 
 Once leaped the blood in every clamorous vein — 
 Once leaped my heart, then dumb, stood still again.
 
 74 A LAST HARVEST 
 
 GO, SONGS OF MINE 
 
 Go, songs of mine to bring her on her way 
 
 With whisperings of love : 
 Tis bleak March now, but then it shall be May. 
 
 With gentle skies above 
 And gentle seas below, what time she hears 
 Your little music chiming in her ears. 
 
 Cold, cold this day, and white the air with snow, 
 
 And dark this place wherefrom 
 My hastening music ever loves to go 
 
 To find its natural home — 
 Its home with her to whom all charms belong; 
 Who is both Queen of Love and Queen of Song.
 
 A LAST HARVEST 7; 
 
 Shall glad spring come ? Shall May come with warm 
 hours 
 
 And laughter of clear light, 
 And blossoming trees, and festivals of flowers, 
 
 And nightingales by night, 
 That pour their shuddering sweetness on the air — 
 The music of an exquisite despair ? 
 
 And shall she come, who is my Spring of springs - 
 
 Herself than May more fair ? 
 Sweet is the song the Night's sad songster sings, 
 
 But her tones are more rare — 
 Ah, shall she come, who is Spring and Summer in one— 
 To my sad life its star, its moon, its sun ?
 
 76 A LAST HARVEST 
 
 AFTER SUMMER 
 
 We'll not weep for summer over- 
 No, not we; 
 
 Strew above his head the clover — 
 Let him be ! 
 
 Other eyes may weep his dying, 
 
 Shed their tears 
 There upon him, where he's lying 
 
 With his peers. 
 
 Unto some of them he proffered 
 
 Gifts most sweet — 
 For our hearts a grave he offered: 
 
 Was this meet ?
 
 A LAST HARVEST 77 
 
 All our fond hopes, praying, perished 
 
 In his wrath — 
 All the lovely dreams we cherished 
 
 Strewed his path. 
 
 Shall we in our tombs, I wonder, 
 
 Far apart, 
 Sundered wide as seas can sunder 
 
 Heart from heart, 
 
 Dream at all of all the sorrows 
 
 That were ours — 
 Bitter nights, more bitter morrows — 
 
 Poison-flowers 
 
 Summer gathered, as in madness. 
 
 Saying, ' See, 
 These are yours, in place of gladness — 
 
 Gifts from me ? '
 
 78 A LAST HARVEST 
 
 Nay, the rest that will be ours, 
 
 Is supreme — 
 And below the poppy flowers 
 
 Steals no dream.
 
 A LAST HARVEST 79 
 
 AT LAST 
 
 Rest here, at last, 
 
 The long way overpast-- 
 
 Rest here, at home — 
 
 Thy race is run, 
 
 Thy dreary journey done, 
 Thy last peak clomb. 
 
 'Twixt birth and death, 
 
 What days of bitter breath 
 
 Were thine, alas ! 
 
 Thy soul had sight 
 
 To see, by day, by night, 
 
 Strange phantoms pass.
 
 8c A LAST HARVEST 
 
 Thy restless heart 
 
 In few glad things had part, 
 
 But dwelt alone, 
 
 And night and day, 
 
 In the old way 
 Made the old moan. 
 
 But here is rest 
 
 For aching brain and breast, 
 
 Deep rest, complete, 
 And nevermore, 
 Heart-weary and foot-sore, 
 
 Shall stray thy feet — 
 
 Thy feet that went 
 
 With such long discontent 
 
 'I'heir wonted beat. 
 
 About thy room. 
 
 With its deep-seated gloom. 
 Or through the street.
 
 A LAST HARVEST 8i 
 
 Death gives them ease — 
 Death gives thy spirit peace — 
 Death lulls thee, quite — 
 
 One thing alone 
 
 Death leaves thee of thine own — 
 Thy starless night. 
 
 F
 
 LAST GARDEN SECRETS
 
 LAST GARDEN SECRETS 
 
 ^■^ — 
 ROSES AND THE NIGHTINGALE 
 
 In my garden it is night-time, 
 But a still time and a bright time, 
 For the moon rains down her splendour, 
 And my garden feels the wonder 
 Of the spell which it lies under 
 In that light so soft and tender. 
 
 '&' 
 
 While the moon her watch is keeping 
 All the blossoms here are sleeping, 
 And the roses sigh for dreaming 
 Of the bees that love to love them 
 When the warm sun shines above them 
 And the butterflies pass gleaming.
 
 86 A I AST I/A/? VEST 
 
 Could one follow roses' fancies, 
 When the night the garden trances, 
 Oh, what fair things we should chance on! 
 For to lilies and to roses, 
 As to us, soft sleep discloses 
 What the waking may not glance on. 
 
 But hark ! now across the moonlight. 
 Through the warmness of the June night, 
 From the tall trees' listening branches 
 Comes the sound, sustained and holy, 
 Of the passionate melancholy. 
 Of a wound which singing staunches. 
 
 Oh, the ecstasy of sorrow 
 Which the music seems to borrow 
 From the thought of some past lover 
 Who loved vainly all his lifetime. 
 Till death ended peace and strife-time. 
 And the darkness clothed him over!
 
 A LAST HARVEST 87 
 
 Oh, the passionate, sweet singing, 
 
 Aching, gushing, throbbing, ringing, 
 
 Dying in divine, soft closes, 
 
 Recommencing, waxing stronger, 
 Sweet notes, ever sweeter, longer, 
 
 Till the singing wakes the roses ! 
 
 Quoth the roses to the singer: 
 ' Oh, thou dearest music-bringer, 
 Now our sleep so sweetly endeth, 
 Tell us why thy song so sad seems, 
 When the air is full of glad dreams, 
 And the bright moon o'er us bendeth.' 
 
 Sang the singer to the roses : 
 ' Love for you my song discloses— 
 
 Hence the note of grief I borrow.' 
 
 Quoth the roses, * Love means pleasure.' 
 Ouoth the singer, ' Love's best measure 
 
 Is its pure attendant sorrow.'
 
 88 A LAST HARVEST 
 
 FLOWER FAIRIES 
 
 Flowkk fairies — have you found them, 
 When the summer's dusk is falling, 
 
 With the glow-worms watching round them, 
 Have you heard them softly calling ? 
 
 Silent stand they through the noonlight. 
 In their flower shapes, fair and quiet. 
 
 Rut they hie them forth by moonlight, 
 Ready then to sing and riot. 
 
 I have heard them — I have seen them. 
 Light from their bright petals raying — 
 
 And the trees bent down to screen them. 
 Great, wise trees, too old for playing.
 
 A LAST HARVEST 89 
 
 Hundreds of them, all together — 
 
 Flashing flocks of flying fairies — 
 Crowding through the summer weather, 
 
 Seeking where the coolest air is. 
 
 And they tell the trees that know them, 
 
 As upon their boughs they hover. 
 Of the things that chance below them, — 
 
 How the rose has a new lover — 
 
 And the gay Rose laughs, protesting, 
 
 ' Neighbour Lily is as fickle': — 
 Then they search where birds are nesting, 
 And their feathers softly tickle. 
 
 Then away they all dance, sweeping, 
 Having drunk their fill of gladness; 
 
 But the trees, their night-watch keeping. 
 Thrill with tender pitying sadness;
 
 go A LAST HARVEST 
 
 For they know of bleak December, 
 
 When each bough left cold and bare is- 
 
 When they only shall remember 
 The bright visits of the fairies — 
 
 When the roses and the lilies 
 
 Shall be gone, to come back never 
 
 From the land where all so still is 
 That they sleep and sleep for ever.
 
 A LAST HARVEST 9^ 
 
 THE LONELY ROSE 
 
 ' To a heaven far away 
 
 Went the Red Rose when she died : ' 
 So I heard the White Rose say, 
 As she swayed from side to side 
 In the chill October blast ! 
 In the garden leaves fall fast — 
 This of roses is the last. 
 
 Said the White Rose, ' O my Red Rose, 
 
 O my Rose so fair to see, 
 When like thee I am a dead rose 
 Shall I in thy heaven be?' 
 the drear October blast! 
 In the garden leaves fall fast — 
 This of roses is the last.
 
 92 A LAST HARVEST 
 
 * From that heavenly place, last night, 
 To me in a dream she came — 
 Stood there in the pale moonlight, 
 And she seemed, my Rose, the same.' 
 O the chill October blast/ 
 In the f^ardcn leaves fall fast — 
 This of roses is the last. 
 
 ' Only it maybe, perchance, 
 
 That her leaves were redder grown. 
 And they seemed to thrill and dance 
 As by gentle breezes blown.' 
 O the drear October blast! 
 In the garden leaves fall fast — 
 This of roses is the last. 
 
 ff 
 
 ' And she told me, sweetly singing. 
 Of that heavenly place afar 
 Where the air with song is ringing, 
 Where the souls of all flowers are.'
 
 A LAST HARVEST 93 
 
 the chill October blast f 
 
 In the garden leaves fall fast — 
 This of roses is the last. 
 
 ' And she bade me not to fail her, 
 Not to lose my heart with fear 
 When I saw the skies turn paler 
 With the sickness of the year — 
 
 1 should be beyond the blast 
 And the leaves now falling fast 
 In that heavenly place at last.'
 
 94 A LAST HARVEST 
 
 SUMMER CHANGES 
 
 Sang the Lily and sang the Rose, 
 Out of the heart of my garden close: — 
 
 ' O joy, O joy of the summer tide ! ' 
 Sang the Wind, as it moved above them: — 
 ' Roses were made for the wind to love them. 
 Dear little buds, in the leaves that hide ! ' 
 
 Sang the trees, as they rustled together: — 
 ' O the joy of the summer weather ! 
 Roses and lilies, how do you fare ? ' 
 Sang the Red Rose, and sang the White: — 
 ' Glad we are of the Sun's large light. 
 
 And the songs of birds that dart through the air.'
 
 A LAST HARVEST 95 
 
 Lily, and Rose, and tall green Tree, 
 Swaying boughs where the bright birds be, 
 
 Thrilled by music, and trembling with wings, 
 How glad they were on that summer day ! 
 Little they recked of skies cold and grey, 
 
 Or the dreary dirge that a Storm-wind sings. 
 
 Golden butterflies gleam in the sun, 
 Laugh at the flowers and kiss each one; 
 
 And great bees come, with their sleepy tune, 
 To sip their honey, and circle round; 
 And the flowers are lulled by that drowsy sound, 
 
 And fall asleep in the heart of the noon. 
 
 A small white cloud in a sky of blue : 
 Roses and Lilies, what will they do ? 
 
 For a wind springs up and sings in the trees : 
 Down comes the rain : the garden's awake : 
 Roses and Lilies begin to quake, 
 
 That were rocked to sleep by the gentle breeze.
 
 96 A LAST HARVEST 
 
 Ah Roses and Lilies ! Each delicate petal 
 The wind and the rain together unsettle — 
 
 This side and that side the tall trees sway: 
 But the wind goes by, and the rain stops soon, 
 And the shadow lifts from the face of the noon, 
 
 And the flowers are glad in the sun's warm ray. 
 
 Sing, my Lilies, and sing, my Roses, 
 
 With never a dream that the summer closes; 
 
 But the trees arc old, and I fancy they tell, 
 Each unto each, how the summer flies: 
 They remember the last year's wintry skies; 
 
 But that Summer returns, the trees know well.
 
 A LAST HAR VES T 97 
 
 A RUINED GARDEN 
 
 All my roses are dead in my Garden — 
 
 What shall I do ? 
 Winds in the night, without pity or pardon, 
 
 Came there and slew. 
 
 All my song-birds are dead in their bushes — 
 
 Woe for such things ! 
 Robins and linnets and blackbirds and thrushes 
 
 Dead, with stiff wings. 
 
 Oh, my Garden! rifled and flowerless, 
 
 Waste now and drear; 
 Oh, my Garden ! barren and bowerless, 
 
 Through all the year.
 
 98 -1 LAST HARVEST 
 
 Oh, my dead birds ! each in his nest there, 
 
 So cold and stark ; 
 What was the horrible death that pressed there 
 
 When skies were dark ? 
 
 What shall I do for my roses' sweetness, 
 
 The summer round — 
 For all my Garden's divine completeness 
 
 Of scent and sound ? 
 
 I will leave my Garden for winds to harry ; 
 
 Where once was peace, 
 Let the bramble-vine and the wild brier marry, 
 
 And greatly increase. 
 
 Hut I will go to a land men know not — 
 
 A far, still land. 
 Where no birds come, and where roses blow not 
 
 And no trees stand —
 
 A LAST HARVEST 99 
 
 Where no fruit grows, where no spring makes riot, 
 
 But, row on row. 
 Heavy, and red, and pregnant with quiet 
 
 The poppies blow. 
 
 And there shall I be made whole of sorrow, 
 
 Have no more care — 
 No bitter thought of the coming morrow, 
 
 Or days that were.
 
 SONNETS
 
 SONNETS 
 
 — « — 
 
 WHEN WITH THY LIFE THOU DIDST 
 ENCOMPASS iMINE 
 
 When with thy Ufe thou didst encompass mine, 
 And I beheld, as from an infinite height, 
 Thy love stretch pure and beautiful as light, 
 Through extreme joy I hardly could divine 
 Whether my love of thee it was, or thine 
 
 Which so my heart astonished with its might. 
 But now, at length, familiar to the sight 
 So I can bear to look where planets shine. 
 Ever more deep the w^onder grows to be 
 That thou shouldst love me, while my love of thee 
 Does of my very nature seem a part — 
 So, often now, as from a dream, I start, 
 To think that thou — even thou — thou lovest me, 
 I being what I am ; thou what thou art.
 
 104 A LAST HARVEST 
 
 THE BREADTH AND BEAUTY OF THE 
 SPACIOUS NIGHT 
 
 The breadth and beauty of the spacious night 
 
 Brimmed with white moonhght, swept by winds 
 
 that blew 
 The flying sea-spray up to where we two 
 
 Sat all alone, made one in Love's delight — 
 
 The sanctity of sunsets palely bright, 
 
 Autumnal woods, seen 'neath meek skies of blue, 
 Old cities that God's silent peace stole through — 
 
 These of our love were very sound and sight: 
 
 The strain of labour; the bewildering din 
 
 Of thundering wheels; the bells' discordant chime; 
 The sacredness of art, the spell of rhyme — 
 
 These, too, with our dear love were woven in, 
 That so, when parted, all things might recall 
 The sacred love that had its part in all.
 
 A LAST HARVEST 105 
 
 WHICH IS IT, LOVE ? 
 
 Which is it, Love, enthralls me more to-night, 
 Quickening the pulses' throb and the heart's beat- 
 The memory of joy so subtly sweet 
 
 It wakes at thought, as when one plays aright 
 
 Some air to which Love's tones were wont to plight 
 The dearest singing words, till with the heat 
 Of passionate remembrance he can cheat 
 
 The heart that longs so even in Death's despite — 
 
 Or is it expectation of fresh bliss — 
 
 That bliss which Memory can so poorly feign, — 
 Deep joy of the anticipated kiss 
 
 Quickening the jubilant blood in every vein ? 
 
 Thought of past joy, or joy to come again; 
 Confused by Love, I know not which it is.
 
 io6 A LAST HARVEST 
 
 HER ATMOSPHERE 
 
 What of her soul's immaculate atmosphere, 
 
 Which all who know her breathe, which he 
 
 knows best 
 Whose heart her love transfigured, saved and blest ? 
 
 Buoyant as is the spring of the young year, 
 
 Tender as twilight when the moon is near, 
 Ardent as noon, and deep as midnight's rest, 
 Pure as the air on heights no foot has prest, 
 
 That unto Heaven aspire, to Heaven are dear: — 
 
 A rareness, and a fragrance, and a sweetness, 
 
 A wonder and a glory without bound, 
 Such is her atmosphere's divine completeness, 
 
 A moving Paradise of sight and sound. 
 Blest She, in whom dear Heaven, dear Earth combine — 
 How shall they reach her, these weak words of mine ?
 
 A LAST HARVEST io7 
 
 LOVE ASLEEP 
 
 I FOUND Love sleeping in a place of shade, 
 
 And as in some sweet dream the sweet lips smiled; 
 Yea, seemed he as a lovely, sleeping child. 
 
 Soft kisses on his full, red lips I laid. 
 
 And with red roses did his tresses braid — 
 Then pure, white lilies on his breast 1 piled. 
 And fettered him with woodbine sweet and wild, 
 
 And fragrant armlets for his arms I made. 
 
 But while I, leaning, yearned across his breast, 
 Upright he sprang, and from swift hand, alert, 
 Sent forth a shaft that lodged within my heart. 
 Ah, had I never played with Love at rest, 
 
 He had not wakened, had not cast his dart. 
 And I had lived who die now of this hurt.
 
 io8 A LAST HARVEST 
 
 LOVE'S GHOST 
 
 Is it the ghost of dead and buried Love 
 
 Which haunts the House of Life, and comes by night 
 
 With weary sighs, and in its eyes the Hght 
 Of joys long set ? I hear its footsteps move 
 Through darkened rooms where only ghosts now rove — 
 
 The rooms Love's shining eyes of old made bright; 
 
 It whispers low — it trembles into sight — 
 A bodiless presence hearts alone may prove. 
 
 I say, ' Sad visitant of this dark house, 
 
 Why wanderest thou through these deserted rooms, 
 A dreadful glimmering light about thy brows ? 
 
 Thy silent home should be among the tombs.' 
 And the Ghost answers, while I thrill with fear, 
 ' In all the world I have no home but here.'
 
 A LAST HARVEST 109 
 
 APRIL 
 
 Betwekn the sudden sunlight and the rain 
 The birds sing gaily in the path wherethrough 
 I walk, and note the sky's ethereal blue, 
 
 Pure as the peace that's won, at last, from pain. 
 
 The sunshine and the sun-bright showers ordain 
 A festival of laughing flowers, whereto 
 The bees go buzzing past me ; trees renew 
 
 Their lives of green : the whole land smiles again. 
 
 O April, longed for so through cheerless hours, 
 Thou who dost turn to silver winter's grey ! 
 
 What is it ails thy skies, thy birds, thy flowers. 
 Gives to thy winds a mournful word to say. 
 
 And brings a sound of weeping with the showers- 
 What, but the thought of Aprils passed away ?
 
 no A LAST HARVEST 
 
 MY GRAVE 
 
 For me no great metropolis of the dead — 
 
 Highways and byways, squares and crescents of 
 
 death — 
 But after I have breathed my last sad breath, 
 
 Am comforted with quiet, I, who said — 
 
 ' I weary of men's voices and their tread, 
 
 Of clamouring bells, and whirl of wheels that pass,' — 
 Lay me beneath some plot of country grass, 
 
 Where flowers may spring, and birds sing overhead: 
 
 Whereto one coming, some fair eve in spring, 
 Between the day-fall and the tender night. 
 
 Might pause awhile, his friend remembering. 
 
 And hear low words, breathed through the failing 
 light, 
 
 In tone as soft as the wind's whispering, — 
 
 ' Now he sleeps long, who had so long to fight.'
 
 A LAST HARVEST m 
 
 HER IN ALL THINGS 
 
 Unto mine ear I set a faithful shell, 
 
 That as of old it might rehearse to me 
 
 The very music of the far-off sea, 
 And thrill my spirit with its fluctuant spell : 
 But not the sea's tones there grew audible, 
 
 But Love's voice, whispering low and tenderly. 
 
 Of things so dear that they must ever be 
 Unspoken, save what heart to heart may tell : 
 
 And hearing in the shell those tones divine — 
 
 Where once I heard the sea's low sounds confer — 
 
 I said unto myself, ' This life of thine 
 
 Holds nothing then which is not part of Her, 
 And all sweet things that to men minister 
 
 Come but from Love, who makes Her heart his shrine.'
 
 112 A LAST HARVEST 
 
 OF EARLY VIOLETS 
 
 Soft subtle scent, which is to me more sweet 
 Than perfumes that come later— when the rose 
 In all the splendour of her beauty blows — 
 
 Here, even to this busy London street, 
 
 Thou bringest visions of the grace we meet 
 When all-forgetful of the winter's snows 
 The earth beneath the sun's kiss throbs and glows, 
 
 And answers to his strength with strong heart-beat. 
 
 Thou'rt like his lady's voice to one who waits, 
 In the dim twilight at her garden gates. 
 
 Her coming face — thou art the trembling rare 
 First note of Nature's prelude that leads on 
 The Spring, till the great, splendid orison 
 
 Of Summer's music vibrates in the air.
 
 A LAST HARVEST 113 
 
 BELLS OF LONDON 
 
 As when an eager boy, I heard to-night 
 The selfsame bells clash out upon the air — 
 It seemed not then a city of despair, , 
 
 But a fair home of promise and delight — 
 
 This London that now breaks me with its might. 
 Is this the end of all sweet dreams and fair ? 
 Is this the bitter answer to my prayer ? 
 
 The bells deride me from the belfry's height — 
 
 ' We clamoured to thee in the old, far years, 
 And all the sorrows of thy life forecast; 
 
 And now, with eyes uncomforted by tears. 
 And dry and seared as by a furnace-blast. 
 
 Thou walkest \'ainly wlicre no hope appears, 
 Between veiled future and disastrous past.' 
 
 H
 
 114 --^ LAST }1ARVEST 
 
 A COUNTRY'S GHOST 
 
 Somp: long dead Country's Ghost it surely is 
 
 Which haunts these Western waters — strange and 
 
 bright 
 With dazzling gold of the sun's setting light, 
 
 Fair hills and fields it shows, but more than this 
 
 We may not know, since all its bane and bliss 
 Lie hidden in its cities, out of sight — - 
 Strange cities, haply wrapt in sleep and night. 
 
 Where phantom lovers come again to kiss : 
 
 Or Ghosts of weary men by stealth come back 
 To climb the silent by-ways noiselessly — 
 
 Those ancient ways which lu; more tlream of change, 
 
 Where still, 1 think, deatl with their dead must 
 range — 
 
 Ghost ! seen a moment in the low sun's track, 
 Now hidden again in the concealing sea.
 
 .•/ LAST HARVEST w- 
 
 TO ALL SAD OF HEART 
 
 I HEARD one cry, ' The day is well nigh done; 
 The sun is setting, and the night is near — - 
 The night wherein no moon or stars appear 
 
 And to whose gloom succeeds no joyful sun — 
 
 The race is ended, and the prize is won; 
 
 What prize hast thou ? ' I rose with heavy cheer, 
 Stretched empty hands, and said, 'No prize is here; 
 
 My feet were bruised, so that I might not run.' 
 
 Of victors wreathed I saw a goodly throng, 
 
 But turned mine eyes from these to where, apart, 
 
 Sad men moved wearily, with heads down-hung. 
 I cried, ' O ye who know Grief's poisonous smart, 
 Brothers ! accept me, now ; for from my heart 
 
 To yours I send the passion of my song ! '
 
 ii6 A LAST HARVEST 
 
 TO ALL IN HAVEN 
 
 All ye who have gained the haven of safe days, 
 And rest at ease, your wanderings being done, 
 Except the last, inc\ilable one. 
 
 Be well content, I say, and hear men's praise; 
 
 Yet in the quiet of your sheltered bays, — 
 Bland waters shining in an equal sun — 
 Forget not that the awful storm-tides run 
 
 In far, unsheltered, and tempestuous ways : 
 
 Remember near what rocks, and through what shoals. 
 Worn, desperate mariners strain with all their might; 
 
 They may not come to your sweet restful goals. 
 Your waters placid in the level light; — 
 
 Their graves wait in that sea no moon controls, 
 That is in dreadful fellowship with Night.
 
 A LAST HARVEST 117 
 
 FORECASTING 
 
 Some day, as now, the world shall reawake : — 
 
 The city from its brief, dream-torture J sleep; 
 
 The country from its rest so pure and deep — 
 To songs of birds in every flowering brake; 
 And men light-hearted, or with hearts that ache, 
 
 Shall rise and go what they have sown to reap; 
 
 And women smile, or sit alone and weep 
 For life once sweet, grown bitter for love's sake : 
 
 But we, that day, shall not be here — not we — 
 
 We shall have done with life though few may 
 know — 
 
 Between us then shall awful stillness be, 
 
 Who spake such words of bliss, such words of woe, 
 
 As winds remember, chanting fitfully — 
 Chanting, as now — above us lying low.
 
 ii8 A LAST HARVEST 
 
 P^RIEXDSHIP AND LOVE 
 
 As feels ihe port for ships that come and go, 
 That tarry for a night, and in the day 
 Spread canvas and steer saihng far away 
 
 To other ports of which it may not know, 
 
 In unconjectured countries, even so 
 
 Man feels for man; nor long may friendship stay; 
 And little of its joy or its dismay 
 
 May any friend's heart to another show. 
 
 As feels the spirit of the melody 
 
 That, slumbering in a viol, a touch will start, 
 As feels the sun-thrilled sap within a tree, 
 
 So man and woman feel, when heart in heart 
 They live, and know this miracle to be, 
 
 In soul together, though to sense apart.
 
 A LAST HARVEST 119 
 
 HERE IN THIS SUNSET SPLENDOUR 
 DESOLATE 
 
 Hhke in this sunset splendour desolate, 
 
 As in some Country strange and sad I stand — 
 A mighty sadness broods upon the land, 
 
 The gloom of some unalterable Fate. 
 
 O Thou whose love dost make august my state, 
 A little longer leav'e in mine thy hand — 
 Night birds are singing, but the place is banned 
 
 By stern gods whom no prayers propitiate. 
 
 Seeking for bliss supreme, we lost the track — 
 Shall we then part, and parted try to reach 
 A goal like that we two sought day and night, 
 Or shall wc sit here, in the sun's low light. 
 And see, it may be through Death's twilight breach, 
 A new path to the old way leading back ?
 
 1 20 A LAST HA R VES T 
 
 ALL ROUND ABOUT ME IS THE 
 CITY'S NOISE 
 
 All round about ine is the City's noise — 
 The pitiless clamour of the London street, 
 Wherethrough to-day I move with flagging feet: 
 
 Ah, shall 1 live, indeed, to hear thy voice; 
 
 Once more in thy dear beauty to rejoice, 
 
 To feel thy heart with mine give beat for beat — 
 Ah, Love, shall lips, and hands and spirits meet, 
 
 Dear Love, once more, before grim Death destroys : 
 
 r)r shall Death come beforehand, in Love's place — 
 His semblance dark be set for dreadful sign ? 
 O Love, if I no more should call thee mine. 
 
 Nor hold thee yet again in Love's embrace! 
 
 O Love, if thou no more shoulJst own me thine, 
 
 Nor even thy tears be shed on my dead face !
 
 A LAST HARVEST 121 
 
 O YE WHO SAILED WITH ME 
 
 O YK who sailed with me the evening seas, 
 
 Take to your boats now and depart, I say. 
 
 Ye know what winds and rains laid waste my day, 
 Yet how with even-song there came surcease; 
 But it is ended here my term of peace : 
 
 The sun has set — once more the sky turns grey, 
 
 And giant waves in menacing array 
 Surge on, and thunder, while the winds increase. 
 
 I must away, and sail to breast their might, 
 I — who once dallied by the fair sea side 
 
 Dreaming of stars, and gentleness of night — 
 Must go, now, with the inexorable tide. 
 
 Straight on to shipwreck, past each beacon light, 
 Till Death, his prey, from all men's sight shall hide.
 
 122 A LAST HARVEST 
 
 BELOVED OF HER 
 
 Those people who are dear to her at all 
 Are for her sweet sake very dear to me — 
 All places known of her divinity 
 
 Are loved by me, and hold my heart in thrall : 
 
 These flowers, that felt her pure breast rise and fall, 
 I aid here apart where all her love-gifts be. 
 Are fragrant with the passionate memory 
 
 Of a dear day now lost past Love's recall : 
 
 Books she has read; least thing her hands have touched, 
 The very floor her garment's hem has brushed 
 Being loved of me, shall I not love as well 
 
 What she loved most — to climb the upward way; 
 No longer in this poppied vale to dwell, 
 
 But scale the heights where shines the perfect day ?
 
 A LAST HARVEST 123 
 
 COULD IT RUr BE! 
 
 Could the sheer weight of suiTcring be laid 
 Upon my heart — if I for both might bear 
 The weariness, the horror, the despair, 
 
 The thoughts whereby the eyes become afraid 
 
 To close themselves in sleep; by grief dismayed 
 Watch the slow hours go by, while sobbing there 
 With broken wing comes back each outcast prayer 
 
 The soul in its wild agony has prayed: 
 
 If so I might take all the pain, and see 
 You walking happy with forgetful soul, 
 
 My image burned from out your memory, 
 
 Your dear feet hastening to some shining goal. 
 
 Then, surely, I could find grief ecstasy — 
 
 I could defy despair, your heart made whole.
 
 124 --i LAST HARVEST 
 
 NOT ONLY ROOiMS WHEREIN THY LOVE 
 HAS BEEN 
 
 Not only rooms wherein thy Love has been 
 Hold still for thee the memory of her grace, 
 The benediction of her blessing face, 
 
 But other rooms that never saw thy Queen 
 
 Are full of her: Has not thy spirit seen 
 A vision of her in this firelit place 
 That never knew the witchery of her ways, 
 
 The perfect voice, the eyes intense, serene ? 
 
 Ah, stood she not before the mirror there, 
 Her loveliness all clothed in soft attire, 
 Then turned to thee, low-kneeling by this fire, 
 
 And laid a gracious hand upon thy hair, 
 
 While thy heart leaped to her, thy heart's desire, 
 
 And thy kiss praised her, and thy look was prayer?
 
 A I AST HARVEST 125 
 
 WHAT WAILING WIND 
 
 What wailing wind of Memory is this 
 That blows across the Sea of Time to-day, 
 Blending the fragrance of a long-dead May 
 
 With breath of Autumn — agony with bliss ? — 
 
 What phantom lips are these that cling and kiss, 
 And, kissing, clinging, find old words to say ? 
 What parted days, in sad and glad array, 
 
 Rise up to haunt me from the grave's abyss ? 
 
 Their tones subdue me, and their eyes confound. 
 So that I may not look from them to where 
 Each with its special message of despair, 
 
 In darkness habited, with darkness crowned, 
 
 Come on the days that rend, and will not spare, 
 
 Till in Death's sleep I, too, at last am bound.
 
 126 A I AST HARVEST 
 
 I THOUGHT THAT I WAS HAPPY 
 YESTERDAY 
 
 I THOUGHT that I was happy yesterday, 
 
 Eor though apart we stood soul close to soul, 
 So joined by infinite Love's supreme control 
 
 That happy s{)ring danced with us on our way— 
 
 But now the brooding sky has turned to grey, 
 And hea\'ily the clouds across it roll : 
 Oh, to what awful, unconjectured goal 
 
 Are our feet tending — my beloved one, say ? 
 
 I dare not speak — dare hardly think of Love — 
 I am as one who not being dead yet hears 
 A sound of lamentation round his bed — 
 Feels falling on his face his friends' hot tears, 
 And, though he struggles inly, cannot move 
 Or say one word to prove he is not dead.
 
 A LAST HARVEST 1^7 
 
 WHEN THOIT ART FAR FROM ME 
 
 Whp:n thou art far from me while days go by 
 In which I may not hear thy voice divine, 
 Or kiss thy hps, or take thy hand in mine, 
 
 I walk as 'neath a dark and hostile sky, 
 
 And the Spring winds seem void of prophecy, 
 Nor is there any cheer in the sun's shine, 
 But present Grief and mocking Fear combine 
 
 To overthrow me when on Love I cry. 
 
 I am as one who through a foreign town 
 Journeys alone, some wild and wintry night, 
 
 And from the windows sees warm light stream down, 
 While there, for him, is neither heat nor hght — 
 
 But far, far off, he has a lordlier home, 
 
 Whereto, one day, his weary feet shall come.
 
 128 A LAST NAN VEST 
 
 FOCR PARABLES 
 
 I 
 HEIGHT UPON HEIGHT 
 
 Height upon height, all washed by heavenly air 
 And crowned of heaven, I saw them rising free — 
 Those heights of Love, where I was fain to be — 
 
 And there I knew Love reigned, benign and fair; 
 
 With noble gifts for whoso enters there: 
 
 But, since between those heavenly heights and me 
 Stretched weary miles, with no compassionate tree 
 
 To shade me from the noon-tide's pitiless glare, 
 
 I paused brief while in a cool, wayside lane. 
 
 Under green boughs, and heard a strange bird sing. 
 
 But when I fain would struggle on again 
 
 Lo, round mc Elfin things had drawn their ring, 
 
 And clouds shut out from me Love's shining height ; 
 
 And Fate's strong sword flashed threatening in my sight.
 
 A LAST HARVEST 129 
 
 II 
 
 ABOUT THIS LAND MOVES MANY A 
 
 SAD-EYED GHOST 
 
 About this land moves many a sad-eyed ghost, 
 And there is wail of weeping all night long, 
 And sounds by day of melancholy song : 
 
 Weird is the land, and beautiful, almost; 
 
 But wrecks of mighty ships strew thick the coast, 
 Though now the sea looks innocent of wrong, 
 And low, soft waves the deep sea-caverns throng, 
 
 Where sirens sing, and Death waits at his post. 
 
 Rise, rise, my soul, that we may strive with fate, 
 And flee the baneful beauty which delays 
 Us through warm, weeping nights and hectic days; 
 
 Spread sail and steer where fresh life may await: 
 
 But ah, what words sigh down these trackless ways — 
 
 What words but these : ' Too late — Too late — Too late 7 
 
 I
 
 I30 A LAST HARVEST 
 
 III 
 
 I WALKED ONE SPRING DAY, WHILE 
 
 YET WINDS WERE COLD 
 
 I WAi.KHi) one spring day, while yet winds were cold, 
 Between the waning day and waxing night, 
 And the boughs strained and whirled in the wind's 
 might. 
 
 I took a simple wild-flower in my hold. 
 
 And fair it was and delicate of mould, 
 
 And sweet to smell, and tremulous with light; 
 And something lurking in its petals white 
 
 Meant more to me than even its fragrance told. 
 
 Full long I held that flower, until one day 
 I came where queenliest, reddest roses grew; 
 Then from my hand afar that flower 1 threw, 
 Roses to gather; but, behold, this hour, 
 
 When roses and their thorn-stems strew the way, 
 I vainly seek for my lost woodland flower.
 
 A LAST HARVEST 131 
 
 IV 
 BEFORE THIS NEW LORD CAME 
 
 Befork this new Lord came into my house 
 It was a quiet place — within its halls 
 Were gracious pictures that made glad the walls 
 
 With hints of Southern slopes and olive boughs, 
 
 Or saints that wore bright halos on their brows — 
 But now that here the new Lord's footstep falls, 
 Now that his voice the ancient peace appals 
 
 Where once from dreams soft music did arouse : 
 
 Lo ! all is changed. Gone the fair, pictured things, 
 And in their stead are many a grinning face, 
 
 And loathly shapes, and hurry of strange wings. 
 Shrieks rend the air, and blood-stained arc the ways 
 
 Yet— heard by me alone — a spirit sings, 
 'I'his Lord shall not forever hold the place.
 
 1^2 A LAST HARVEST 
 
 LOVE'S DESERTED PALACE 
 
 Rkgaki) it well, 'tis yet a lordly place; 
 
 Palace of Love, once warmed with sacred fires, 
 Stjunding from end to end with joy of lyres, 
 
 Fragrant with incense, with great lights ablaze. 
 
 The fires are dead now, dead the festal rays; 
 No more the music marries keen desires, 
 No more the incense of the shrine aspires, 
 
 And of Love's godhead there is now no trace. 
 
 Yet if one walked at night through those dim halls. 
 Might it not chance that ghostly shapes would rise. 
 
 And ghostly lights glide glimmering down the walls, 
 That there might be a stir, a sound of sighs. 
 
 And gentle voices answering gentle calls, 
 
 And wayward, wandering wraiths of melodies ?
 
 A LAST HARVEST 133 
 
 SPRING AND DESPAIR 
 
 Thk cold spring twilight fills his lonely room — 
 There is no warmth, no fragrance on the air — 
 No song, but roll of traffic everywhere ; 
 
 He dwells apart, in his own separate gloom, 
 
 Borne down by dread inevitable doom. 
 
 The bitter winds have left the young trees bare; 
 So wind-swept is his soul, no longer fair, 
 
 And withering slowly in a mortal tomb. 
 
 The early cold of spring shall pass away. 
 
 And June come on, of all sweet gifts possest, 
 With noons for rapture, and deep nights for rest, 
 
 Rut never any vivifying ray 
 
 Shall change for him one hour of any day 
 
 Till death's dark flower be laid on brow and breast.
 
 134 '-^ LAST HARVEST 
 
 LETHARGY 
 
 This is no midnight rent with thunder and fire, 
 
 Charged by mad winds, and wild bewildering rain; 
 
 Here is no great despair, no splendid pain, 
 But niisly light, in which near things retire 
 And things far off loom close: No least desire 
 
 Is here : Why race ? — There is no goal to gain ; 
 
 Only one lethargy of heart and brain, 
 Which now not even Grief can re-inspire. 
 
 A sense of unseen Presences, that throng 
 
 The lonely room, the loud and populous street; 
 
 A sound from days long past, half wail, half song; 
 Death hurrying on, with swift, approaching feet; 
 
 Showing the man, as in a vision dread. 
 
 His cold, (lead self stretched stiff upon a bed.
 
 A LAST HARVEST 133 
 
 FROM LONDON STREETS 
 
 How fares it with my Love, in her far place ? 
 I hear along the streets, this afternoon, 
 Thunder of wheels, and melancholy tune 
 
 Of church bells clashing over crowded ways. 
 
 To her of peerless heart and perfect face — 
 In whom is April wedded unto June — 
 Go now, my song, and breathe som.e mystic rune, 
 
 That she may think of far-off lovely days. 
 
 Oh, for my love's sake, and my soul's deep woe, 
 Be as a kiss upon dear lips and eyes — 
 
 Be warm about her, that her heart may know 
 The heart of one who is so little wise 
 
 That for the dreams and days of long ago 
 He seeks still with the spirit's diligent eyes
 
 13^ A LAST HARVESl^ 
 
 OUT OF SLEEP 
 
 From out dream-haunted coverts of dim sleep 
 A spirit staggers blindly toward the day, 
 Once more to face the old, unchanged dismay- 
 Once more to climb Life's desolate road and steep, 
 To sow his difficult field, and not to reap, 
 To look far up the dark and tedious way. 
 To see Death waiting at the end, to pray 
 That he may know prayer's worth, to watch and weep; 
 
 To linger in the once familiar place, 
 
 To talk with ghosts, frail ghosts that come and flee. 
 Some with kind eyes, some with reproachful gaze; 
 
 To see his unburicd past stretched wretchedly 
 Across his path; and still forever face 
 
 Each pitiless day, till days no more shall be.
 
 A LAST HARVEST i37 
 
 RESIGNATION 
 
 I THOUGHT in life to meet with Happiness, 
 And when, instead, Grief met me by the way 
 Most strange and bitter words I found to say; 
 
 But still I thought, through all the strain and stress 
 
 Of sorrowful living — through my life's excess 
 Of grief and loss — ' Pain shall not always stay, 
 And fair may be the closing of my day; 
 
 Clear light and quiet may my evening bless ! ' 
 
 Then Happiness was shown me like the sun — 
 One flash and glory of triumphant light 
 Lit all my sky : but swiftly came the night 
 
 With waste winds wailing on the dead day's track; 
 And I am silent, now the day is done, 
 
 Knowing no words can bring its lost light back.
 
 138 A LAST HARVEST 
 
 TO-MORROW 
 
 I SAID 'To-morrow!' one bleak, winter day — 
 ' To-morrow I will live my life anew,' — 
 And still ' To-morrow ! ' while the winter grew 
 To spring, and yet I dallied by the way. 
 And sweet dear Sins still held me in their sway: 
 'To-morrow!' I said, while summer days wore 
 
 through; 
 ' To-morrow ! " while chill autumn round me drew; 
 And so my soul remained the sweet Sins' prey. 
 
 So pass the years, and still, perpetually, 
 I cry, ''j'o-morrow will I flee each wile — 
 
 To-morrow, surely, shall my soul stand free, 
 Safe from the syren voices that beguile !' 
 But Death waits by me, with a mocking smile, 
 
 And whispers—' Yea ! Tomorrow, verily ! '
 
 A LA ST HA R VEST 1 39 
 
 SORROW'S GHOST 
 
 I SAW one sitting, habited in grey, 
 
 Beside a lonely stream ; and in her eyes 
 Was all the tenderness of twilight skies 
 
 In middle spring, when lawns are flushed with May. 
 
 ' Mysterious one,' I cried, ' who art thou ? Say !' 
 She answered in low tones, scarce heard through 
 
 sighs: 
 ' Look, on this face ! Dost thou not recognise 
 
 A face well known once, in another day?' 
 
 Then on the air these words grew audible: — 
 'The same she is who scorched thine eyes with tears; 
 But changed now by the sovereign force of years, 
 And piteous grown, and no more terrible: 
 Look on her now, who once thy life opprest — 
 Called bitterest Sorrow then; but now named Rest.'
 
 140 A LAST HARVEST 
 
 LONDON, FROM FAR 
 
 Akak from all this country peace it lies, 
 Tremendous and unscrutable for gloom — 
 The dreadful, fateful City of my doom. 
 
 I know its lurid, fog-invested skies — 
 
 I know what pestilential odours rise 
 
 From court and alley, each a living tomb — 
 I know the tainted flowers, by night that bloom 
 
 Along its wayside — flowers men spurn and prize. 
 
 I know the strife, and the unceasing din — 
 The utmost blackness of its heart I know — 
 
 I hear their shrieks and groans who toil within, 
 And cries of those it murdered long ago — 
 
 Yet mid the twisted growths of Shame and Sin, 
 One woodland flower of memory shall grow.
 
 A LAST HARVEST \\\ 
 
 UNSHELTERED LOVE 
 
 LiKK a storm-driven and belated bird 
 
 That beats with aimless wings about his nest, 
 Straining against the storm his eager breast, 
 
 So is my love, which by no swift-winged word' 
 
 May enter at her heart, and there be heard 
 To sing as birds do, ere they fold in rest 
 Their wings, still quivering from the last sweet quest 
 
 When with their song and flight the air was stirred. 
 
 Oh, if some wind of bitter disbelief, 
 
 Some terrible darkness of estranging doubt, 
 
 Has kept it from thee, now, sweet Love, reach out 
 
 Thine hand and pluck it from this storm of grief: 
 It takes no heed of homeless nights and days. 
 So in thy heart it find its resting place.
 
 142 A LAST HARVEST 
 
 WHEN IN THE DARKNESS I WAKE UP 
 
 ALONE 
 
 When in the darkness I wake up alone, 
 
 To face the loveless, desolated day, 
 
 What thought shall comfort, or what hope shall stay ? 
 Ah Love, dear Love, Sweetheart that wast mine own. 
 Thou wilt not hear my spirit's bitter moan — 
 
 Thou wilt not see the terrible array 
 
 Of foemen marching on my destined way, 
 With ruthless hands and hearts more hard than stone. 
 
 I shall be left in those old ways to tread 
 
 Where Love and Sorrow walked with thee and me: — 
 For thee, ghosts of old days, unquiet dead — 
 
 Days glad in life, and sad in memory — 
 For me, to bow down weary heart and head 
 
 On dead Hope's grave, till I be dead as she.
 
 A LAST HARVEST 143 
 
 A PRAYER TO SLEEP 
 
 O SLERP, to-night be tender to my Love — ■ 
 
 Hold her within thy clasp, so dear and deep — 
 Press gently on those sweetest eyes, kind Sleep: 
 
 Let no sad thought of me intrude, to move 
 
 Her heart to grief; but through some fair dream grove 
 Where faint songs steal, and gentle shadows creep, 
 And mystic stars and moons of dreamland keep 
 
 Their fond, persistent vigil, let her rove ; 
 
 And if a dream of me must come, at all, 
 
 O show me to her glad with love and strong ; 
 
 Let on her mouth my garnered kisses fall, 
 And to her ears make audible that song 
 
 I sang her once, when at her feet I lay, 
 
 At close of one divine, love-laden day !
 
 144 ^ LAST HARVEST 
 
 1 WALKED IN LOVE'S DESERTED ROOM 
 
 I wAi.KKD in Love's deserted room alone, 
 
 And saw the lampless shrine, and in Love's place 
 Not Hope's transcendent light, nor met her gaze 
 
 Who, Queen of Love, made all my heart her own; 
 
 But a strange shape, as cold and hard as stone: 
 And round it pressed in that most desolate place 
 A phantom band, each one with ghastly face. 
 
 And each for some especial grief made moan. 
 
 1 saw my Soul there, reigning in Love's stead. 
 
 And it cried out, ' Depart, ye clamouring throng- 
 While Joy or Grief was mine I gave ye song; 
 
 But now, behold my last song word is said: 
 Love is a frail thing; Death alone is strong, 
 
 And Hope, and Joy, and Grief with Love lie dead.'
 
 A LAST flARVESr 145 
 
 TO THE SPIRIT OF POETRY 
 
 All things are changed save thee — -thou art the same, 
 Only perchance more dear, as one friend grows 
 When other friends have turned away. Who knows 
 
 With what strange joy thou didst my life inflame 
 
 Before I took upon my lips the name 
 
 Which vows me to thy service ? Come thou close; 
 For to thy feet, to-day, my being flows, 
 
 As when, a boy, for comforting I came. 
 
 Thou, whose transfiguring touch makes speech divine; 
 
 Whose eyes are deeper than deep seas or skies, 
 Warm with thy fire this heart, these lips of mine, 
 
 frighten the darkness with thy luminous eyes, 
 Till all the quiv'ering air about me shine, 
 
 And I have gained my spirit's Paradise ! 
 
 K
 
 146 A LAST HARVEST 
 
 OLD MEMORIES 
 
 What olden memories are these that throng 
 To greet me on the threshold of this day — 
 Of buried hours what melancholy array ? 
 
 Dull, now, the eyes that once were clear and strong- 
 
 Their lips but whisper that once thrilled with song- 
 Their grave-clothes are upon them, and they say- 
 ' Know'st thou us still, and by what winding way 
 
 We led thy steps; nor did that path seem long ? ' 
 
 Yea, verily ! I know ye but too well: 
 
 Your loving kindness once indeed was sweet — 
 
 Your deep joy subtler than a man may tell — 
 But why, with hearts that can no longer beat, 
 
 Why come ye back, and weave the olden spell 
 To daze my senses and perplex my feet ?
 
 A LAST HARVEST 147 
 
 GOOD-NIGHT AND GOOD-MORROW 
 
 The fires are all burned out, the lamps are low, 
 
 The guests are gone, the cups are drained and dry. 
 Here there was somewhat once of revelry; 
 
 But now no more at all the fires shall glow, 
 
 Nor song be heard, nor laughter, nor wine flow. 
 Chill is the air ; grey gleams the wintry sky: 
 Through lifeless boughs drear winds begin to sigh. 
 
 'Tis time, my heart, for us to rise and go 
 
 Up the steep stair, till that dark room we gain 
 Where sleep awaits us, brooding by that bed 
 
 On which who lies forgets all joy and pain, 
 
 Nor weeps in dreams for some sweet thing long fled. 
 
 'Tis cold and lonely now; set wide the door; 
 
 Good-morrow, my heart, and rest thee evermore.
 
 London: Vip^o Street, W. 
 
 October, 1891. 
 
 Mr Elkin Mathews's Publications 
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