A Lament

CLOUDS is under clouds and rain

For there will not come again

Two, the beloved sire and son

Whom all gifts were rained upon.

Kindness is all done, alas,

Courtesy and grace must pass,

Beauty, wit and charm lie dead,

Love no more may wreathe the head.

Now the branch that waved so high

No wind tosses to the sky;

There's no flowering time to come,

No sweet leafage and no bloom.

Percy, golden-hearted boy,

In the heyday of his joy

Left his new-made bride and chose

The steep way that Honour goes.

Took for his the deathless song

Of the love that knows no wrong:

Could I love thee, dear, so true

Were not Honour more than you?

(Oh, forgive, dear Lovelace, laid

In this mean Procrustean bed!)

Dear, I love thee best of all

When I go, at England's call.

In our magnificent sky aglow

How shall we this Percy know

Where he shines among the suns

And the planets and the moons?

Percy died for England, why,

Here's a sign to know him by!

There's one dear and fixèd star,

There's a youngling never far.

Percy and his father keep

The old loved companionship,

And shine downward in one ray

Where at Clouds they wait for day.

(FOR Holy Cross Day, 1914)