Year: 1876

| lSwinburne need not write many poems like this
to place himself at the head of living poets.l
In coign Of the cliff between lowland and highland
| AZ the sea-downs edge between Windward and lee
Walled round with rocks as an inland island,
The ghost of garden fronts the sea-
| A girdle of brushwood and thorn incloses
The steep square slope of the blossomless bed
Where the weeds that grew green from the graves of
Now lie dead.
| The fields fall southwark abrupt and broken
To the low last edge of the long lone land
| II step should sound or word be spoken,
Would ghost not rise the strange guests hand
SO long have the bare gray walks lain guestlesss
Through branches and briars, if man make way,
lie shall find no life but the sea wind IS restless
Night and day.
The dense hard passage is blind and stifed
That craws by track none turn to climb
TO the strait waste place that the years have rfed
OF all but thorns that are touched not of time.
The thorns he spares when the rose Is taken;
=, The rocks are left when he wastes the plain.
The wind that Wanders, the weeds wind d-shaken,


These remain.
Not flower to be prest of the foot that falls not
AS the heart of dead man the seed plots are dry :
From the thicket of thorns whence ti5 nightingale


calls not,


Could she call there were never rose to reply
Over the meadows that blossom and wither
Rings but the note of a sea-bird's song;
Only the sun and the rain come hither


All year long.
The sun burns sere and the rain disheyels
One gaunt bleak blossom of scentess breath.
Only the wind here hovers and revels
In sound where life seems barren as death.
Here there laughing of old. there was weeping,
HAPPY of lovers none ever will know,
Whose eyes went seaward hundred sleeping


Years ago,
Heart handfas in heart as they ssood Look thther"
Did he whisper: Look forth from the flowers to the





For the foam flowers endure when the rose blossoms


wither,


And men that love lightly may die but we?"
And the same wind sang and the same waye whitened
And forever the gardens last petals were shed,
In the lips that had whispered, eyes that had light


ened,


Love was dead.
Or they loved their life through and then went thith


er?


And were one to the end-but what end who knows?
owe deep as the sea as rose must wither,
AS the rose e-red seaweed that mocks the rose.
Shall the dead take thought for the dead to love them?
What love was ever as deep grave?
They are loveless now as the grass above them


Or the wave.
All are at one now, roses and lovers,
Not known to the cliff, and the fields, and the
Not breath of the time that has been hovers
In the air now soft with summer to be-.
Not breath shall there sweeen the hereafter
OF the flowers or the lovers that laugh now weep.
When as they that are free now of weeping and


laughter


We shall sleep.
Here death may deal not again forever;
Here change may come not till all change end.
From the graves they haye made they shall rise up


never,


Who have left nought liz .ng to ravage and rend.
EARTH stones and thorns of the wild ground growing,
While the sun and the rain live, these shall be;
Till last winds breath upon all these blowing


Rolls the sea.
Till the slow sea rise and the sheer cliff crumble
Till terrace and meadow the deep CULTS drink,
Till the strength of the of the high tides hum


BILE
The fields that lessen, the rocks that shrink,
Here now in his triumph where all things fater,
Stretched ont on the spois that his own hand


spread,
As a god self-slain on his own strange altar,


Death lies dead.
A. G. aSa0iabuSne, In the London 4tAen9aan.