No rose but fades: no glory but must pass:
No hue but dims: no precious silk but frets.
Her beauty must go underneath the grass,
Under the long roots of the violets.
O, many glowing beauties Time has hid
In that dark, blotting box the villain sends.
He covers over with a coffin-lid
Mothers and sons, and foes and lovely friends.
Maids that were redly-lipped and comely-skinned,
Friends that deserved a sweeter bed than clay.
All are as blossoms blowing down the wind,
Things the old envious villain sweeps away.
And though the mutterer laughs and church bells toll,
Death brings another April to the soul.
THE WILD DUCK
Twilight; red in the west;
Dimness; a glow on the wood.
The teams plod home to rest.
The wild duck come to glean.
O souls not understood,
What a wild cry in the pool;
What things have the farm ducks seen
That they cry so, huddle and cry?
Only the soul that goes,
Eager, eager, flying,
Over the globe of the moon,
Over the wood that glows;
Wings linked; necks a-strain,
A rush and a wild crying.
* * * *
A cry of the long pain
In the reeds of a steel lagoon
In a land that no man knows.
Selections from
POMPEY THE GREAT
Chorus
Man is a sacred city, built of marvellous earth.
Life was lived nobly here to give this body birth.
Something was in this brain and in this eager hand.
Death is so dumb and blind, Death cannot understand.
Death drifts the brain with dust and soils the young limbs’ glory.
Death makes women a dream and men a traveller’s story,
Death drives the lovely soul to wander under the sky,
Death opens unknown doors. It is most grand to die.