# Studies in Song/A Parting Song

A PARTING SONG
A PARTING SONG.
(To a friend leaving England for a year's residence in Australia.)
These winds and suns of spring That warm with breath and wing The trembling sleep of earth, till half awake She laughs and blushes ere her slumber break, For all good gifts they bring Require one better thing, For all the loans of joy they lend us, borrow One sharper dole of sorrow, To sunder soon by half a world of sea Her son from England and my friend from me.
Nor hope nor love nor fear May speed or stay one year, Nor song nor prayer may bid, as mine would fain, The seasons perish and be born again, Restoring all we lend, Reluctant, of a friend, The voice, the hand, the presence and the sight That lend their life and light To present gladness and heart-strengthening cheer, Now lent again for one reluctant year.
So much we lend indeed, Perforce, by force of need, So much we must; even these things and no more The far sea sundering and the sundered shore A world apart from ours, So much the imperious hours,
Exact, and spare not; but no more than these All earth and all her seas From thought and faith of trust and truth can borrow, Not memory from desire, nor hope from sorrow.
Through bright and dark and bright Returns of day and night I bid the swift year speed and change and give His breath of life to make the next year live With sunnier suns for us A life more prosperous, And laugh with flowers more fragrant, that shall see A merrier March for me, A rosier-girdled race of night with day, A goodlier April and a tenderer May.
For him the inverted year Shall mark our seasons here With alien alternation, and revive This withered winter, slaying the spring alive With darts more sharply drawn As nearer draws the dawn In heaven transfigured over earth transformed And with our winters warmed And wasted with our summers, till the beams Rise on his face that rose on Dante's dreams.
Till fourfold morning rise Of starshine on his eyes, Dawn of the spheres that brand steep heaven across At height of night with semblance of a cross Whose grace and ghostly glory Poured heaven on purgatory
Seeing with their flamelets risen all heaven grow glad For love thereof it had And lovely joy of loving; so may these Make bright with welcome now their southern seas.
O happy stars, whose mirth The saddest soul on earth That ever soared and sang found strong to bless, Lightening his life's harsh load of heaviness With comfort sown like seed In dream though not in deed On sprinkled wastes of darkling thought divine, Let all your lights now shine With all as glorious gladness on his eyes For whom indeed and not in dream they rise.
As those great twins of air Hailed once with oldworld prayer Of all folk alway faring forth by sea, So now may these for grace and guidance be, To guard his sail and bring Again to brighten spring The face we look for and the hand we lack Still, till they light him back, As welcome as to first discovering eyes Their light rose ever, soon on his to rise.
As parting now he goes From snow-time back to snows, So back to spring from summer may next year Restore him, and our hearts receive him here, The best good gift that spring Had ever grace to bring
At fortune's happiest hour of star-blest birth Back to love's homebright earth, To eyes with eyes that commune, hand with hand, And the old warm bosom of all our mother-land.
Earth and sea-wind and sea And stars and sunlight be Alike all prosperous for him, and all hours Have all one heart, and all that heart as ours. All things as good as strange Crown all the seasons' change With changing flower and compensating fruit From one year's ripening root; Till next year bring us, roused at spring's recall, A heartier flower and goodlier fruit than all.
March 26, 1880.
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