In July
His beauty bore no token,
No sign our gladness shook;
With tender strength unbroken
The hand of Life he took:
But the summer flowers were falling,
Falling and fading away,
And mother birds were calling,
Crying and calling
For their loves that would not stay.
He knew not Autumn's chillness,
Nor Winter's wind nor Spring's;
He lived with Summer's stillness
And sun and sunlit things:
But when the dusk was falling
He went the shadowy way,
And one more heart is calling,
Crying and calling
For the love that would not stay.
{122}
From Generation to Generation
O son of mine, when dusk shall find thee bending
Between a gravestone and a cradle's head—
Between the love whose name is loss unending
And the young love whose thoughts are liker dread,—
Thou too shalt groan at heart that all thy spending
Cannot repay the dead, the hungry dead.
{123}
When I Remember
When I remember that the day will come
For this our love to quit his land of birth,
And bid farewell to all the ways of earth
With lips that must for evermore be dumb,
Then creep I silent from the stirring hum,
And shut away the music and the mirth,
And reckon up what may be left of worth
When hearts are cold and love's own body numb.