To J. H.

Comrade, my comrade, they are calling names
Of epoch-making men about the town
Who died but now ; and these are nought to me,
Who mourn my brother, lowly, poor, unknown.
Dead with them in thy manhood's flower ;
thee Death
Took using all thy strength to wrest a friend
From his cold clutch ; but he would take you both.
No famous man hath ended better ; God
Approveth, and thy comrade honours thee.
True child of ocean, whom wild wind and wave
Bronzed with much kissing, claiming for their own ;
Convivial, improvident, free-handed,
Who more than once plucked human lives from waves
That would have whelmed in their tremendous play.

But life, alas ! proves often hard to bear
For such as you, one warfare grim and long
With famine, daily want of those who lean
On you for daily needs, your children, wives ;
And so, may be, the horror of cold gloom,
That unaware enshrouded my poor heart,
To thee was but the long-delayed, blithe sail,
Scarce hoped for, dawning on the mariner
Who thirsts and hungers on a sullen sea ;
For niggard Life had used thee hardly ; Death
Relieves from burdens unendurable.

But, ah ! myfriend, I maynot see thee more.
Nor hear, nor feel ! whnm now in this my dwelling
The very rooms with their appurtenances,
Inanimate and trivial, recall ;
The frame well-knit, well-moulded, the deft hand,
That so disposed them even now ; yon beach
That strews my garden speaks of thee
Who brought it ; still I seek a face well-loved,
And listen for a well-remembered tone
Upon the stairway, in my private chamber ;
Ah ! who will do thine office for me now ?
Nay, we may never more climb waves together
In bounding boats, nor ply the limber oar
Among those bounding billows : but I roam
Heart-wounded in chill twilight by the shore.
Like him of old of whom blind Homer sang,
How, reft of one he loved, disconsolate,
He went in silence by the sounding sea :
I hear that rhythmic breathing of the sea
And evermore the surge repeats thy name.
Even so Achilles mourned his friend
Patroclus,
So Alexander wept Hephaestion.

O may thy soul repose in peace, my friend,
Nor any troubled dream disturb thy rest ;
But from a maze of tranquil reverie
May one remembrance, light as a rosepetal.
Float to my world and wandering to me
Here by my side assume the form beloved

Brighton, October 1891.