Then in his thin, high-pitched but exquisitely modulated and musical voice he half read, half chanted two verses of the poem in question:
One young life lost, two happy young lives blighted
With earthward eyes we see:
With eyes uplifted, keener, farther-sighted
We look, O Lord, to Thee.
Grief hears a funeral knell: Hope hears the ringing
Of birthday bells on high.
Faith, Hope and Love make answer with soft singing,
Half carol and half cry.
Then he stopped abruptly.
“I won’t read the third and last verse,” he said. “One glance at it is sufficient to show that it is unequal, and that the poem would be stronger and finer by its omission. But for the happy folk who are able to think as she thinks, who believe as she believes on religious matters, the poem is of its kind perfect. Let me read that second verse again,” and with glowing eyes, with hand marking time to the music, he read once more:
Grief hears a funeral knell: Hope hears the ringing
Of birthday bells on high.
Faith, Hope and Love make answer with soft singing,
Half carol and half cry.
The last line, “Half carol and half cry,” he repeated three times, lowering his voice with each repetition, until at last it was little more than a whisper, and so died away, like the undistinguishable ceasing of far-off music.
Laying the manuscript reverently beside him, he sat perfectly still for a space and with brooding beautiful eyes. Then rising without a word he stole silently, softly, almost ghost-like, but with short, swift steps out of the room.
III
Though it was my privilege to count among my friends several personal friends of Swinburne—notably the late Theodore Watts-Dunton, Philip Bourke Marston, and the dearest and closest of all my friends, Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton—it was not until the first weeks of 1892 that I met him personally.