PASTICHE

Now the days are all gone over

Of our singing, love by lover,

Days of summer-coloured seas

Blown adrift through beam and breeze.

Now the nights are all past over

Of our dreaming, dreams that hover

In a mist of fair false things,

Nights afloat on wide wan wings.

Now the loves with faith for mother,

Now the fears with hope for brother,

Scarce are with us as strange words,

Notes from songs of last year's birds.

Now all good that comes or goes is

As the smell of last year's roses,

As the radiance in our eyes

Shot from summer's ere he dies.

Now the morning faintlier risen

Seems no God come forth of prison,

But a bird of plume-plucked wing,

Pale with thoughts of evening.

Now hath hope, outraced in running,

Given the torch up of his cunning

And the palm he thought to wear

Even to his own strong child — despair.