LIII
THE FAITHFUL DEPARTED
Say what good-bye
We owe to those who lived unstained by guile,
Who seemed to die,
But made their death a smile,
As though to promise we should meet within
A little while.
Is this good-bye,
To sorrow o’er the blood-red pall of day,
Till in the sky
Faint tapers coldly pray;
And think our joy died like the buried sun’s
Last golden ray?
Is this good-bye,
To tread on sallow leaves in autumn rain,
And hear winds sigh
An echo of our pain;
And think that never can the bud-crowned spring
Return again?
Is this good-bye,
To watch the myriad falling flakes of snow
Whirl down and lie
Upon the fields below;
And think the wonted path is now too dim
For us to know?
Not so: good-bye
Means faith in love kept warm by robes of white,
Faith to deny
The death of any light,
Faith that to-morrow will be yesterday
Without its night.
LIV
LETHE
Ere we shall touch the jasper parapet,
That God has set
About His garden and the sea of glass,
Shall we first pass
Through some calm stream of soft forgetfulness
And wash our hapless little joys away?
And shall our souls in infant nakedness
Emerge to bathe in God’s eternal day?
Shall we forget the garden roundelays
Of piping Mays,
When thrushes sang around the dewy lawns
In roseleaf dawns,
And tulips—purple, saffron, red and white,—
Below the shade of box and fragrant bay,
Would lift to heaven their well-poised heads, as bright
As ever bloomed in Shiraz or Cathay?
Shall we forget the music of the sea,
The virgin glee
Which swayed beneath her robes dyed emerald,
And so enthralled
The vernal sun that he would downward shower
More silver on her violet crystal fringe
Than ever Sultan made his daughter’s dower
Or locked in Istamboul with key and hinge?