Page:The Poems of Henry Kendall (1920).djvu/349



rest! Hard by the margin of that sea

Whose sounds are mingled with his noble verse

Now lies the shell that never more will house

The fine strong spirit of my gifted friend.

Yea, he who flashed upon us suddenly,

A shining soul with syllables of fire,

Who sang the first great songs these lands can claim

To be their own; the one who did not seem

To know what royal place awaited him

Within the Temple of the Beautiful,

Has passed away; and we who knew him sit

Aghast in darkness, dumb with that great grief

Whose stature yet we cannot comprehend;

While over yonder churchyard, hearsed with pines,

The night wind sings its immemorial hymn,

And sobs above a newly-covered grave.

The bard, the scholar, and the man who lived

That frank, that open-hearted life which keeps

The splendid fire of English chivalry

From dying out; the one who never wronged

A fellow man; the faithful friend who judged

The many, anxious to be loved of him

By what he saw, and not by what he heard,

As lesser spirits do; the brave, great soul

That never told a lie, or turned aside

To fly from danger—he, as I say, was one

Of that bright company this sin-stained world

Can ill afford to lose.

They did not know,

The hundreds who had read his sturdy verse

And revelled over ringing major notes,

The mournful meaning of the undersong

Which runs through all he wrote, and often takes

The deep autumnal, half-prophetic tone

Of forest winds in March; nor did they think

That on that healthy-hearted man there lay

The wild specific curse which seems to cling

Forever to the Poet's twofold life!