DEAD POETS

Last night, amazed, I trod on holy ground

Breathing an air that ancient poets knew,

Where, in a valley compassed with sweet sound,

Beneath a garden's alley'd shades of yew,

With eager feet passed that singer sweet

Who Stella loved, whom bloody Zutphen slew

In the starred zenith of his knightly fame.

There too a dark-stoled figure I did meet:

Herbert, whose faith burned true

And steadfast as the altar candle's flame.

Under the Wilton cedars, pondering

Upon the pains of Beauty and the wrong

That sealeth lovely lips, fated to sing,

Before they reach the cadence of their song,

I mused upon dead poets: mighty ones

Who sang and suffered: briefly heard were they

As Libyan nightingales weary of wing

Fleeing the temper of Saharan suns

To gladden our moon'd May,

And with the broken blossom vanishing.

So to my eyes a sorrowful vision came

Of one whose name was writ in water: bright

His cheeks and eyes burned with a hectic flame;

And one, alas! I saw whose passionate might

Was spent upon a fevered fen in Greece;

One shade there was who, starving, choked with bread;

One, a drown'd corpse, through stormy water slips;

One in the numbing poppy-juice found peace;

And one, a youth, lay dead

With powdered arsenic upon his lips.

O bitter were the sorrow that could dull

The sombre music of slow evening

Here, where the old world is so beautiful

That even lesser lips are moved to sing

How the wide heron sails into the light

Black as the cedarn shadows on the lawns

Or stricken woodlands patient in decay,

And river water murmurs through the night

Until autumnal dawns

Burn in the glass of Nadder's watery way.

Nay, these were they by whom the world was lost,

To whom the world most richly gave: forlorn

Beauty they worshipp'd, counting not the cost

If of their torment beauty might be born;

And life, the splendid flower of their delight,

Loving too eagerly, they broke, and spill'd

The perfume that the folded petals close

Before its prime; yet their frail fingers white

From that bruised bloom distill'd

Uttermost attar of the living rose.

Wherefore, O shining ones, I will not mourn

You, who have ravish'd beauty's secret ways

Beneath death's impotent shadow, suffering scorn,

Hatred, and desolation in her praise....

Thus as I spoke their phantom faces smiled,

As brooding night with heavy downward wing

Fell upon Wilton's elegiac stone,

On the dark woodlands and the waters wild

And every living thing —

Leaving me there amazed and alone.