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Death

by W.J. Turner

When I am dead a few poor souls shall grieve

As I grieved for my brother long ago.

Scarce did my eyes grow dim,

I had forgotten him;

I was far-off hearing the spring winds blow,

And many summers burned

When, though still reeling with my eyes aflame,

I heard that faded name

Whispered one Spring amid the hurrying world

From which, years gone, he turned.

I looked up at my windows and I saw

The trees, thin spectres sucked forth by the moon.

The air was very still

Above a distant hill;

It was the hour of night's full silver moon.

'O are thou there my brother?' my soul cried;

And all the pale stars down bright rivers wept,

As my heart sadly crept

About the empty hills, bathed in that light

That lapped him when he died.

Ah! it was cold, so cold; do I not know

How dead my heart on that remembered day!

Clear in a far-away place

I see his delicate face

Just as he called me from my solitary play,

Giving into my hands a tiny tree.

We planted it in the dark, blossomless ground

Gravely, without a sound;

Then back I went and left him standing by

His birthday gift to me.

In that far land perchance it quietly grows

Drinking the rain, making a pleasant shade;

Birds in its branches fly

Out of the fathomless sky

Where worlds of circling light arise and fade.

Blindly it quivers in the bright flood of day,

Or drowned in multitudinous shouts of rain

Glooms o'er the dark-veiled plain -

Buried below, the ghost that's in his bones

Dreams in the sodden clay.

And, while he faded, drunk with beauty's eyes

I kissed bright girls and laughed deep in dumb trees,

That stared fixt in the air

Like madmen in despair

Gaped up from earth with the escaping breeze.

I saw earth's exaltation slowly creep

Out of their myriad sky-embracing veins.

I laughed along the lanes,

Meeting Death riding in from the hollow seas

Through black-wreathed woods asleep.

I laughed, I swaggered on the cold hard ground -

Through the grey air trembled a falling wave -

'Thou'rt pale, O Death!' I cried,

Mocking him in my pride;

And passing I dreamed not of that lonely grave,

But of leaf-maidens whose pale, moon-like hands

Above the tree-foam waved in the icy air,

Sweeping with shining hair

Through the green-tinted sky, one moment fled

Out of immortal lands.

One windless Autumn night the Moon came out

In a white sea of cloud, a field of snow;

In darkness shaped of trees,

I sank upon my knees

And watched her shining, from the small wood below -

Faintly Death flickered in an owl's far cry - -

We floated soundless in the great gulf of space,

Her light upon my face -

Immortal, shining in that dark wood I knelt

And knew I could not die.

And knew I could not die - O Death, didst thou

Heed my vain glory, standing pale by thy dead?

There is a spirit who grieves

Amid earth's dying leaves;

Was't thou that wept beside my brother's bed?

For I did never mourn nor heed at all

Him passing on his temporal elm-wood bier;

I never shed a tear.

The drooping sky spread grey-winged through my soul,

While stones and earth did fall.

That sound rings down the years - I hear it yet -

All earthly life's a winding funeral -

And though I never wept,

But into the dark coach stept,

Dreaming by night to answer the blood's sweet call,

She who stood there, high-breasted, with small, wise lips,

And gave me wine to drink and bread to eat,

Has not more steadfast feet,

But fades from my arms as fade from mariners' eyes

The sea's most beauteous ships.

The trees and hills of earth were once as close

As my own brother, they are becoming dreams

And shadows in my eyes;

More dimly lies

Guaya deep in my soul, the coastline gleams

Faintly along the darkening crystalline seas.

Glimmering and lovely still, 'twill one day go;

The surging dark will flow

Over my hopes and joys, and blot out all

Earth's hills and skies and trees.

I shall look up one night and see the Moon

For the last time shining above the hills,

And thou, silent, wilt ride

Over the dark hillside.

'Twill be, perchance, the time of daffodils -

_'How come those bright immortals in the woods?

Their joy being young, didst thou not drag them all

Into dark graves ere Fall?'_

Shall life thus haunt me, wondering, as I go

To thy deep solitudes?

There is a figure with a down-turned torch

Carved on a pillar in an olden time,

A calm and lovely boy

Who comes not to destroy

But to lead age back to its golden prime.

Thus did an antique sculptor draw thee, Death,

With smooth and beauteous brow and faint sweet smile,

Not haggard, gaunt and vile,

And thou perhaps art thus to whom men may,

Unvexed, give up their breath.

But in my soul thou sittest like a dream

Among earth's mountains, by her dim-coloured seas;

A wild unearthly Shape

In thy dark-glimmering cape,

Piping a tune of wavering melodies,

Thou sittest, ay, thou sittest at the feast

Of my brief life among earth's bright-wreathed flowers,

Staining the dancing hours

With sombre gleams until, abrupt, thou risest

And all, at once, is ceased.