Robert Bridges

“ Yet feels to my hand as if
’Twas still thy will, thy pleasure and trust that enfolds it.
38So I lay thee there, thy sunken eyelids closing,—
Go lie thou there in thy coffin, thy last little bed!—
Propping thy wise, sad head,
Thy firm, pale hands across thy chest disposing.
So quiet! doth the change content thee?—Death, whither hath he taken thee?
To a world, do I think, that rights the disaster of this?
The vision of which I miss,
Who weep for the body, and wish but to warm thee and awaken thee? ”

“ Than thou, so upright, so stately, and still thou standest.
11And yet, O splendid ship, unhailed and nameless,
I know not if, aiming a fancy, I rightly divine
That thou hast a purpose joyful, a courage blameless,
Thy port assured in a happier land than mine.
But for all I have given thee, beauty enough is thine,
As thou, aslant with trim tackle and shrouding,
From the proud nostril curve of a prow’s line
In the offing scatterest foam, thy white sails crowding. ”

“ Amidst its work which time may not destroy,
The beauteous forms which man shall love to cherish,
The glorious songs that combat earths annoy?
Thou dost dwell here, I know, divinest Joy:
But they who build thy towers fair and strong,
Of all that toil, feel most of care and wrong.
Sense is so tender, O and hope so high,
That common pleasures mock their hope and sense;
And swifter than doth lightning from the sky
The ecstasy they pine for flashes hence,
Leaving the darkness and the woe immense, 40
Wherewith it seems no thread of light was woven,
Nor doth the track remain where once ’twas cloven. ”

“ Nor need she strain her powers
Beyond a common flight,
To make the passing hours
Happy from morn till night.
Since health our toil rewards,
And strength is labour’s prize,
I hate not, nor despise
The work my lot accords ”

“ Which earth may steal away but not replace.
There is no sorrow like the slow heart-searing,
When phantoms bred of earth spring up between
Two loving hearts, who grew to their endearing,
When all their pushing tendrils yet were green:
No time-struck ruin is so sad to see
As youth’s disease: than thus, O Love, to be,
’Twere better for thy honour not to have been. ”

“ Of the winter dawning, the strange unheavenly glare:
The eye marvelled—marvelled at the dazzling whiteness;
The ear hearkened to the stillness of the solemn air;
No sound of wheel rumbling nor of foot falling,
And the busy morning cries came thin and spare.
34Then boys I heard, as they went to school, calling,
They gathered up the crystal manna to freeze
Their tongues with tasting, their hands with snow-balling;
Or rioted in a drift, plunging up to the knees;
Or peering up from under the white-mossed wonder,
“O look at the trees!” they cried, “O look at the trees!” ”

“ Must gather his faith together, and his strength make stronger.
To me, as I move thee now in the last duty,
Dost thou with a turn or a gesture anon respond;
Startling my fancy fond
With a chance attitude of the head, a freak of beauty.
Thy hand clasps, as ’twas wont, my finger, and holds it:
But the grasp is the clasp of Death, heartbreaking and stiff ”