II

Bright and brief in the sight of grief and love the light of thy
lifetime shone,
Seen and felt by the gifts it dealt, the grace it gave, and again
was gone:
Ay, but now it is death, not thou, whom time has conquered as years
pass on.

Ay, not yet may the land forget that bore and loved thee and
praised and wept,
Sidney, lord of the stainless sword, the name of names that her
heart's love kept
Fast as thine did her own, a sign to light thy life till it sank
and slept.

Bright as then for the souls of men thy brave Arcadia resounds and
shines,
Lit with love that beholds above all joys and sorrows the steadfast
signs,
Faith, a splendour that hope makes tender, and truth, whose presage
the soul divines.

All the glory that girds the story of all thy life as with sunlight
round,
All the spell that on all souls fell who saw thy spirit, and held
them bound,
Lives for all that have heard the call and cadence yet of its music
sound.

Music bright as the soul of light, for wings an eagle, for notes a
dove,
Leaps and shines from the lustrous lines wherethrough thy soul from
afar above
Shone and sang till the darkness rang with light whose fire is the
fount of love.

Love that led thee alive, and fed thy soul with sorrows and joys
and fears,
Love that sped thee, alive and dead, to fame's fair goal with thy
peerless peers,
Feeds the flame of thy quenchless name with light that lightens the
rayless years.

Dark as sorrow though night and morrow may lower with presage of
clouded fame,
How may she that of old bare thee, may Sidney's England, be brought
to shame?
How should this be, while England is? What need of answer beyond
thy name?