So many a year had borne its own bright bees
  And slain them since thy honey-bees were hived,
  John Day, in cells of flower-sweet verse contrived
So well with craft of moulding melodies,
Thy soul perchance in amaranth fields at ease
  Thought not to hear the sound on earth revived
  Of summer music from the spring derived
When thy song sucked the flower of flowering trees. 
But thine was not the chance of every day: 
  Time, after many a darkling hour, grew sunny,
    And light between the clouds ere sunset swam,
Laughing, and kissed their darkness all away,
  When, touched and tasted and approved, thy honey
    Took subtler sweetness from the lips of Lamb.

TO JOHN NICHOL

I

Friend of the dead, and friend of all my days
  Even since they cast off boyhood, I salute
  The song saluting friends whose songs are mute
With full burnt-offerings of clear-spirited praise. 
That since our old young years our several ways
  Have led through fields diverse of flower and fruit,
  Yet no cross wind has once relaxed the root
We set long since beneath the sundawn’s rays,
The root of trust whence towered the trusty tree,
  Friendship—­this only and duly might impel
    My song to salutation of your own;
More even than praise of one unseen of me
  And loved—­the starry spirit of Dobell,
    To mine by light and music only known.

II

But more than this what moves me most of all
  To leave not all unworded and unsped
  The whole heart’s greeting of my thanks unsaid
Scarce needs this sign, that from my tongue should fall
His name whom sorrow and reverent love recall,
  The sign to friends on earth of that dear head
  Alive, which now long since untimely dead
The wan grey waters covered for a pall. 
Their trustless reaches dense with tangling stems
  Took never life more taintless of rebuke,
    More pure and perfect, more serene and kind,
Than when those clear eyes closed beneath the Thames,
  And made the now more hallowed name of Luke
    Memorial to us of morning left behind.

May 1881.

DYSTHANATOS

Ad generem Cereris sine caede et vulnere pauci Descendunt reges, aut sicca morte tyranni.

By no dry death another king goes down
  The way of kings.  Yet may no free man’s voice,
  For stern compassion and deep awe, rejoice
That one sign more is given against the crown,
That one more head those dark red waters drown
  Which rise round thrones whose trembling equipoise
  Is propped on sand and bloodshed and such toys
As human hearts that shrink at human frown. 
The name writ red on Polish earth, the star
That was to outshine our England’s in the far
  East heaven of empire—­where is one that saith
Proud words now, prophesying of this White Czar? 
  “In bloodless pangs few kings yield up their breath,
Few tyrants perish by no violent death.”