BARKING HALL: A YEAR AFTER

Still the sovereign trees

Make the sundawn's breeze

More bright, more sweet, more heavenly than it rose,

As wind and sun fulfil

Their living rapture: still

Noon, dawn, and evening thrill

With radiant change the immeasurable repose

Wherewith the woodland wilds lie blest

And feel how storms and centuries rock them still to rest.

Still the love-lit place

Given of God such grace

That here was born on earth a birth divine

Gives thanks with all its flowers

Through all their lustrous hours,

From all its birds and bowers

Gives thanks that here they felt her sunset shine

Where once her sunrise laughed, and bade

The life of all the living things it lit be glad.

Soft as light and strong

Rises yet their song

And thrills with pride the cedar-crested lawn

And every brooding dove.

But she, beloved above

All utterance known of love,

Abides no more the change of night and dawn,

Beholds no more with earth-born eye

These woods that watched her waking here where all things die.

Not the light that shone

When she looked thereon

Shines on them or shall shine for ever here.

We know not, save when sleep

Slays death, who fain would keep

His mystery dense and deep,

Where shines the smile we held and hold so dear.

Dreams only, thrilled and filled with love,

Bring back its light ere dawn leave nought alive above.

Nought alive awake

Sees the strong dawn break

On all the dreams that dying night bade live.

Yet scarce the intolerant sense

Of day's harsh evidence

How came their word and whence

Strikes dumb the song of thanks it bids them give,

The joy that answers as it heard

And lightens as it saw the light that spake the word.

Night and sleep and dawn

Pass with dreams withdrawn:

But higher above them far than noon may climb

Love lives and turns to light

The deadly noon of night.

His fiery spirit of sight

Endures no curb of change or darkling time.

Even earth and transient things of earth

Even here to him bear witness not of death but birth.