Page:Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1918.djvu/1020

 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE

And now no sacred staff shall break in blossom, No choral salutation lure to light A spirit sick with perfume and sweet night

And love's tired eyes and hands and barren bosom. There is no help for these things; none to mend, And none to mar; not all our songs, O friend,

Will make death clear or make life durable. Howbeit with rose and ivy and wild vine And with wild notes about this dust of thine

At least I fill the place where white dreams dwell And wreathe ah unseen shrine.

��Sleep; and if life was bitter to thee, pardon,

If sweet, give thanks; thou hast no more to live, And to give thanks is good, and to forgive.

Out of the mystic and the mournful garden

Where all day through thine hands in barren braic Wove the sick flowers of secrecy and shade,

Green buds of sorrow and sm, and remnants gray,

Sweet-smelling, pale with poison, sanguine-hearted, Pabsions that sprang from sleep and thoughts that started,

Shall death not bring us all as thcc one day Among the days departed^

For thee, O now a silent soul, my brother,

Take at my hands this garland, and farewell. Thin is the leaf, and chill the wintry smell,

And chill the solemn earth, a fatal mother, With sadder than the Niobean womb, And in the hollow of her breasts a tomb.

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