To Percy Buck

Folk alien to the Muse have hemm’d us round
And fiends have suck’d our blood: our best delight
Is poison’d, and the year’s infective blight
Hath made almost a silence of sweet sound.
But you, what fortune, Percy, have you found
At Harrow? doth fair hope your toil requite?
Doth beauty win her praise and truth her right,
Or hath the good seed fal’n on stony ground?

Ply the art ever nobly, single-soul’d
Like Brahms, or as you ruled in Wells erewhile,
--Nor yet the memory of that zeal is cold--
Where lately I, who love the purer style,
Enter’d, and felt your spirit as of old
Beside me, listening in the chancel-aisle.