Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/150

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By sunlight or by starlight ever thou

Art excellent in beauty manifold;

The still star victory ever gems thy brow;

Age cannot age thee, ages make thee old.

Thy beauty brightens with the evening sun

Across the long-lit meads and distant spire:

So sleep thou well—like his thy labour done;

Rest in thy glory as he rests in fire.

But even in this hour of soft repose

A gentle sadness chides us like a friend—

The sorrow of the joy that overflows,

The burden of the beauty that must end.

And from the fading sunset comes a cry,

And in the twilight voices wailing past,

Like wild-swans calling, "When we rest we die,

And woe to them that linger and are last";

And as the Sun sinks, sudden in heav'n new born

There shines an armèd Angel like a Star,

Who cries above the darkling world in scorn,

"God comes to Judgment. Learn ye what ye are."

From fire to umber fades the sunset-gold,

From umber into silver and twilight;

The infant flowers their orisons have told

And turn together folded for the night;

The garden urns are black against the eve;

The white moth flitters through the fragrant glooms;

How beautiful the heav'ns!—But yet we grieve

And wander restless from the lighted rooms.

For through the world to-night a murmur thrills

As at some new-born prodigy of time—

Peace dies like twilight bleeding on the hills,

And Darkness creeps to hide the hateful crime.