(In Memoriam)
You, who would never leave us to our sleeping,
But ever nosed us out of bed to play,
How can we ever think of you as keeping
So strangely still, as stirless as the clay?
We cannot think you dead to games and laughter;
Surely in some bright place beyond the sun,
Girls race and play, and you go racing after,
And lie across their feet when games are done.
Who knows, but in our separate times and places
When we have slept the last, last sleep away,
You yet may come, your nose against our faces,
And wake us to our bright, immortal play...
And if you startle us with rude surprise,
You'll beg—and win—forgiveness with those eyes.
IN SUMMER
I think these stars that draw so strangely near,
That lean and listen for the turning earth,
Are never wholly careless when they hear
The murmur of her hushed and quiet mirth,—
But looking out upon a world in bloom,
They half-remember, and they heed and hark:
An old, old sweetness in the scented gloom,
An old, old music in the singing dark.
Their own full Summers gone, such æons past,
Bird-song and bloom and swallow from the sky,
These dead, desireless worlds find here, at last,
Something remembered when the earth turns by,
Sweet with these blowing odours they had known,
This happy music that was once their own.