DEATH AND MEMORY

By Frederic Manning

Death hath not slain thee all: when twilight spends

Her liquid amber in the latest ebb

Withdrawing, and the day in silence ends,

Expectant of the stars, when through the web

Of woven boughs fall glimmering silver spears,

Our dreaming heart will stir, as if a light

Caress had touched it, and fill up with tears,

Remembering: nor only with the night

Fall that sweet sadness, light in a dark place,

Memory. Shrouded in her shrine of flesh,

The soul sits brooding, veiled of form and face

By Time, and in our mortal nature's mesh

Trammelled, yet sometimes hears the sound of wings

And sees, far off, divine, immortal things.