Page:The Poems of Henry Kendall (1920).djvu/166

 There he lies and sleeps

From year to year—in soft Australian nights,

And through the furnaced noons, and in the times

Of wind and wet! Yet never mourner comes

To drop upon that grave the Christian's tear

Or pluck the foul, dank weeds of death away.

But while the English autumn filled her lap

With faded gold, and while the reapers cooled

Their flame-red faces in the clover grass,

They looked for him at home: and when the frost

Had made a silence in the mourning lanes

And cooped the farmers by December fires,

They looked for him at home: and through the days

Which brought about the million-coloured Spring,

With moon-like splendours, in the garden plots,

They looked for him at home: while Summer danced,

A shining singer, through the tasselled corn,

They looked for him at home. From sun to sun

They waited. Season after season went,

And Memory wept upon the lonely moors,

And hope grew voiceless, and the watchers passed,

Like shadows, one by one away.

And he

Whose fate was hidden under forest leaves

And in the darkness of untrodden dells

Became a marvel. Often by the hearths

In winter nights, and when the wind was wild

Outside the casements, children heard the tale

Of how he left their native vales behind

(Where he had been a child himself) to shape

New fortunes for his father's fallen house;

Of how he struggled—how his name became,

By fine devotion and unselfish zeal,

A name of beauty in a selfish land;

And then of how the aching hours went by,

With patient listeners praying for the step

Which never crossed the floor again. So passed

The tale to children; but the bitter end

Remained a wonder, like the unknown grave,

Alone with God and Silence in the hills.