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In Memory Of Douglas Vernon Cow

by Muriel Stuart

This Poem, Dedicated to His Mother.

To twilight heads comes Death as comes a friend,

As with the gentle fading of the year

Fades rose, folds leaf, falls fruit, and to their end

Unquestioning draw near,

Their flowering over, and their fruiting done,

Fulfilled and finished and going down with the sun.

But for June's heart there is no comforting

When her full-throated rose

Still quick with buds, still thrilling to the air,

By some stray wind is tossed,

Her swelling grain that goes

Heavy to harvesting

In a black gale is lost,

And her round grape that purpled to the wine

Is pinched by some chance frost.

Ah, then cry out for that lost, lovely rose,

For the stricken wheat, and for the finished vine!

Such were you who sleep now, who have foregone

So many of Life's rich secrets almost learned;

Winning so much, so much as yet unwon,

Yet to be dared, to discover, to reveal.

Quick still with ardour, hand still at the wheel

On wide and unsailed seas, eyes turning still

Towards the morning, while the keen brain burned

To the imperative will.

Upon your summer Death seems to set his heel,

Writes on the page "No more,"

And brings the sign of sunset, shuts the door

And the house is dark and the tired mourners sleep.

Yet says he too, "Though quiet at last you lie,

"And have done with laughter and strife and joy and care,

"You have honour with your peace; and still you keep

"Fullness of life and of felicity.

"You have seen the Grail. What need you of grey hair?

"There are those who daily die,

"Who have long out lived their welcome in the world,

"Who are old and sad and tired and fain to cease

"From the crowded earth, and the hours in tumult whirled,

"Urgent and vain. You are not such as these

"Who have striven for laurels, and never knew the shade

"Upon their brows, who would persuade the rose,

"And never have come near it; till the head

"Bows and the heart breaks, and the spirit knows

"Only its failure, dim and featureless, -

"Its weariness of all things dreamed and done,

"When love and grief alike seem emptiness

"And fame and man's unrecognition one."

The full tide took you. You went out with the sun,

Not in the cringing ebb, not in the grey

And tremulous twilight, when each lonely one

To its last loneliness must creep away.

Your genius has won its rich repose,

Full laurelled, wearing still the unfaded rose.

And as those who bid good-bye at snowdrop time

Bear with them broken promises of Spring,

So you in triumph, - in the glory men had in you,

In Love's full worshipping, -

High summer thoughts, untouched of Winter's rime,

Went forth with honour, having fulfilled your Spring.

The hands that built you felt you flower from her prayer,

True to her vision true;

Fearless and fine, shaped from her fashioning;

Hands empty now, and yet not all unfilled,

Having built and fired the generous heart and brain,

Of the man you were; whose fervent spirit willed

You to the service and healing and help of men.

These things are hers, not to be lost nor changed

With changes of death; for though the body die

The golden deed is stamped eternally

With the head of God. The new and alien years

Leave it still bright, unaltered, unestranged.

Almost too proud, and too profound for tears

Is the high memory that the desolate heart

Shrines and is dumb, yet may for ever keep

Unforbidden, the imperishable part,

And what Love held, awake, he holds, asleep.