Since that first April when you fared
Into the Gatehouse, well content,
Caring for nothing so you cared
For honor and for Kent.
How many, since the April rain
Beat drear and blossomless and hoar
Through London, when you left Shoe Lane,
A-marching to no war!
Till now, with April on the sea,
And sunshine in the woven year,
The rain-winds loose from reverie
A lyric and a cheer.
A SEAMARK
A Threnody for Robert Louis Stevenson
Cold, the dull cold! What ails the sun,
And takes the heart out of the day?
What makes the morning look so mean,
The Common so forlorn and gray?
The wintry city’s granite heart
Beats on in iron mockery,
And like the roaming mountain rains,
I hear the thresh of feet go by.
It is the lonely human surf
Surging through alleys chill with grime,
The muttering churning ceaseless floe
Adrift out of the North of time.
Fades, it all fades! I only see
The poster with its reds and blues
Bidding the heart stand still to take
Its desolating stab of news.
That intimate and magic name:
“Dead in Samoa.” ... Cry your cries,
O city of the golden dome,
Under the gray Atlantic skies!