The Dying Poet

Swing in thy splendour, O silent sun,
Drawing my heart with thee over the west!
Done is its day as thy day is done,
Fallen its quest!

Swoon into purple and rose--then sink,
Tho' to arise again out of the dawn.
Sink while I praise thee, ere thro' the dark link
Of death I am drawn!

Sunk? art thou sunken? how great was life!
I like a child could cry for it again--
Cry for its beauty, pang, fleeting and strife,
Its women, its men!

For, how I drained it with love and delight!
Opened its heart with the magic of grief!
Reaped every season--its day and its night!
Loved every sheaf!

Aye, not a meadow my step has trod,
Never a flower swung sweet to my face,
Never a heart that was touched of God,
But taught me its grace.

Off, from my lids then a moment yet,
Fingering Death, for again I must see
Miraged by memory all that I met
Under Time's lee.

There!... I'm a child again--fair, so fair!
Under the eyes does a marvel not burn?
Speak they not vision, song, frenzy to dare,
That still in me yearn?...

Youth! my wild youth!--O, blood of my heart,
Still you can answer with whirling the thought!
Still like the mountain-born rapid can dart,
Joyous, distraught!...

Love, and her face again! there by the wood!--
Come thou invisible Dark with thy mask!
Shall I not learn if she lives? and could
I more of thee ask?...

Turn me away from the ashen west,
Where love's sad planet unveils to the dusk.
Something is stealing like light from my breast--
Soul from its husk ...

Soft!... Where the dead feel the buried dead,
Where the high hermit-bell hourly tolls,
Bury me, near to the haunting tread
Of life that o'errolls.