TO F. J. S.

READ, dear friend, in your dear face Your life's tale told with perfect grace; The river of your life, I trace

Up the sun-chequered, devious bed
To the far-distant fountain-head.

Not one quick beat of your warm heart,
Nor thought that came to you apart,
Pleasure nor pity, love nor pain
Nor sorrow, has gone by in vain;

But as some lone, wood-wandering child
Brings home with him at evening mild.
The thorns and flowers of all the wild,
From your whole life, O fair and true
Your flowers and thorns you bring with you!

REQUIEM

NDER the wide and starry sky,

Dig the grave and let me lie.

Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.

THE CELESTIAL SURGEON

F I have faltered more or less

In my great task of happiness; If I have moved among my race And shown no glorious morning face; If beams from happy human eyes Have moved me not; if morning skies, Books, and my food, and summer rain Knocked on my sullen heart in vain: — Lord, thy most pointed pleasure take And stab my spirit broad awake; Or, Lord, if too obdurate I, Choose thou, before that spirit die, A piercing pain, a killing sin, And to my dead heart run them in!

OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS

UT of the sun, out of the blast, Out of the world, alone I passed Across the moor and through the wood To where the monastery stood. There neither lute nor breathing fife, Nor rumour of the world of life, Nor confidences low and dear, Shall strike the meditative ear. Aloof, unhelpful, and unkind, The prisoners of the iron mind, Where nothing speaks except the hell The unfraternal brothers dwell.

Poor passionate men, still clothed afresh
With agonising folds of flesh;

Whom the clear eyes solicit still
To some bold output of the will,
While fairy Fancy far before

And musing Memory-Hold-the-door

Now to heroic death invite
And now uncurtain fresh delight:
O, little boots it thus to dwell
On the remote unneighboured hill!

O to be up and doing, O
Unfearing and unshamed to go
In all the uproar and the press
About my human business!
My undissuaded heart I hear
Whisper courage in my ear.

With voiceless calls, the ancient earth
Summons me to a daily birth.
Thou, O my love, ye, O my friends —
The gist of life, the end of ends -
To laugh, to love, to live, to die,
Ye call me by the ear and eye!

Forth from the casemate, on the plain.
Where honour has the world to gain,
Pour forth and bravely do your part,
O knights of the unshielded heart!
Forth and forever forward! — out
From prudent turret and redoubt,
And in the mellay charge amain,
To fall but yet to rise again!