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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=533742" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Fragments Pts 1, 11, 111</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">These broken lines for pardon crave;<br> I cannot end the song with art:<br>My grief is gray and old—her grave<br> Is dug so deep within my heart. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">I.—Her Last Day <br>IT was a day of sombre heat:<br>The still, dense air was void of sound<br>And life; no wing of bird did beat<br>A little breeze through it—the ground<br>Was like live ashes to the feet.<br>From the black hills that loomed around<br>The valley many a sudden spire<br>Of flame shot up, and writhed, and curled,<br>And sank again for heaviness:<br>And heavy seemed to men that day<br>The burden of the weary world.<br>For evermore the sky did press<br>Closer upon the earth that lay<br>Fainting beneath, as one in dire<br>Dreams of the night, upon whose breast<br>Sits a black phantom of unrest<br>That holds him down. The earth and sky<br>Appeared unto the troubled eye<br>A roof of smoke, a floor of fire. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">There was no water in the land.<br>Deep in the night of each ravine<br>Men, vainly searching for it, found<br>Dry hollows in the gaping ground,<br>Like sockets where clear eyes had been,<br>Now burnt out with a burning brand.<br>There was no water in the land<br>But the salt sea tide, that did roll<br>Far past the places where, till then,<br>The sweet streams met and flung it back;<br>The beds of little brooks, that stole<br>In spring-time down each ferny glen,<br>And rippled over rock and sand,<br>Were drier than a cattle-track.<br>A dull, strange languor of disease,<br>That ever with the heat increased,<br>Fell upon man, and bird, and beast;<br>The thin-flanked cattle gasped for breath;<br>The birds dropped dead from drooping trees;<br>And men, who drank the muddy lees<br>From each near-dry though deep-dug well,<br>Grew faint; and over all things fell<br>A heavy stupor, dank as Death. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Fierce Nature, glaring with a face<br>Of savage scorn at my despair,<br>Withered my heart. From cone to base<br>The hills were full of hollow eyes<br>That rayed out darkness, dead and dull;<br>Gray rocks grinned under ridges bare,<br>Like dry teeth in a mouldered skull;<br>And ghastly gum-tree trunks did loom<br>Out of black clefts and rifts of gloom,<br>As sheeted spectres that arise<br>From yawning graves at dead of night<br>To fill the living with affright;<br>And, like to witches foul that bare<br>Their withered arms, and bend, and cast<br>Dread curses on the sleeping lands<br>In awful legends of the past,<br>Red gums, with outstretched bloody hands,<br>Shook maledictions in the air. <br>Fear was around me everywhere:<br>The wrinkled foreheads of the rocks<br>Frowned on me, and methought I saw—<br>Deep down in dismal gulfs of awe,<br>Where gray death-adders have their lair,<br>With the fiend-bat, the flying-fox,<br>And dim sun-rays, down-groping far,<br>Pale as a dead man’s fingers are—<br>The grisly image of Decay,<br>That at the root of Life doth gnaw,<br>Sitting alone upon a throne<br>Of rotting skull and bleaching bone. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">“There is an end to all our griefs:<br>Little the red worm of the grave<br>Will vex us when our days are done.”<br>So changed my thought: up-gazing then<br>On gray-piled stones that seemed the cairns<br>Of dead and long-forgotten chiefs—<br>The men of old, the poor wild men<br>Who, under dim lights, fought a brave,<br>Sad fight of Life, where hope was none,<br>In the vague, voiceless, far-off years—<br>It changed again to present pain,<br>And I saw Sorrow everywhere:<br>In blackened trees and rust-red ferns,<br>Blasted by bush-fires and the sun;<br>And by the salt-flood—salt as tears—<br>Where the wild apple-trees hung low,<br>And evermore stooped down to stare<br>At their drowned shadows in the wave,<br>Wringing their knotted hands of woe;<br>And the dark swamp-oaks, row on row,<br>Lined either bank—a sombre train<br>Of mourners with down-streaming hair. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>II.—Sunset <br>THE DAY and its delights are done;<br> So all delights and days expire:<br>Down in the dim, sad West the sun<br> Is dying like a dying fire. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">The fiercest lances of his light<br> Are spent; I watch him droop and die<br>Like a great king who falls in fight;<br> None dared the duel of his eye </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Living, but, now his eye is dim,<br>The eyes of all may stare at him. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">How lovely in his strength at morn<br>He orbed along the burning blue!<br>The blown gold of his flying hair<br>Was tangled in green-tressèd trees,<br>And netted in the river sand<br>In gleaming links of amber clear;<br>But all his shining locks are shorn,<br>His brow of its bright crown is bare,<br>The golden sceptre leaves his hand,<br>And deeper, darker, grows the hue<br>Of the dim purple draperies<br>And cloudy banners round his bier. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">O beautiful, rose-hearted dawn!—<br>O splendid noon of gold and blue!—<br>Is this wan glimmer all of you?<br>Where are the blush and bloom ye gave<br>To laughing land and smiling sea?—<br>The swift lights that did flash and shiver<br>In diamond rain upon the river,<br>And set a star in each blue wave?<br>Where are the merry lights and shadows<br>That danced through wood and over lawn,<br>And flew across the dewy meadows<br>Like white nymphs chased by satyr lovers?<br>Faded and perished utterly. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">All delicate and all rich colour<br>In flower and cloud, on lawn and lea,<br>On butterfly, and bird, and bee,<br>A little space and all are gone—<br>And darkness, like a raven, hovers<br>Above the death-bed of the day. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">So, when the long, last night draws on,<br>And all the world grows ghastly gray,<br>We see our beautiful and brave<br>Wither, and watch with heavy sighs<br>The life-light dying in their eyes,<br>The love-light slowly fading out,<br>Leaving no faint hope in their place,<br>But only on each dear wan face<br>The shadow of a weary doubt,<br>The ashen pallor of the grave. <br>O gracious morn and golden noon!<br>With what fair dreams did ye depart—<br>Beloved so well and lost so soon!<br>I could not fold you to my breast:<br>I could not hide you in my heart;<br>I saw the watchers in the West—<br>Sad, shrouded shapes, with hands that wring<br>And phantom fingers beckoning! </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>III.—Years After <br>Fade off the ridges, rosy light,<br>Fade slowly from the last gray height,<br>And leave no gloomy cloud to grieve<br>The heart of this enchanted eve! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">All things beneath the still sky seem<br>Bound by the spell of a sweet dream;<br>In the dusk forest, dreamingly,<br>Droops slowly down each plumèd head;<br>The river flowing softly by<br>Dreams of the sea; the quiet sea<br>Dreams of the unseen stars; and I<br>Am dreaming of the dreamless dead. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">The river has a silken sheen,<br>But red rays of the sunset stain<br>Its pictures, from the steep shore caught,<br>Till shades of rock, and fern, and tree<br>Glow like the figures on a pane<br>Of some old church by twilight seen,<br>Or like the rich devices wrought<br>In mediaeval tapestry. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">All lonely in a drifting boat<br>Through shine and shade I float and float,<br>Dreaming and dreaming, till I seem<br>Part of the picture and the dream. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">There is no sound to break the spell,<br>No voice of bird or stir of bough;<br>Only the lisp of waters wreathing<br>In little ripples round the prow,<br>And a low air, like Silence breathing,<br>That hardly dusks the sleepy swell<br>Whereon I float to that strange deep<br>That sighs upon the shores of Sleep. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">But in the silent heaven blooming<br> Behold the wondrous sunset flower<br> That blooms and fades within the hour—<br>The flower of fantasy, perfuming<br> With subtle melody of scent<br> The blue aisles of the firmament! <br>For colour, music, scent, are one;<br> From deeps of air to airless heights,<br>Lo! how he sweeps, the splendid sun,<br> His burning lyre of many lights! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">See the clear golden lily blowing!<br> It shines as shone thy gentle soul,<br> O my most sweet, when from the goal<br> Of life, far-gazing, thou didst see—<br> While Death still feared to touch thine eyes,<br>Where such immortal light was glowing—<br> The vision of eternity,<br>The pearly gates of Paradise! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Now richer hues the skies illume:<br>The pale gold blushes into bloom,<br>Delicate as the flowering<br>Of first love in the tender spring<br>Of Life, when love is wizardry<br> That over narrow days can throw<br> A glamour and a glory! so<br>Did thine, my Beautiful, for me<br> So long ago; so long ago. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">So long ago! so long ago!<br> Ah, who can Love and Grief estrange?<br>Or Memory and Sorrow part?<br> Lo, in the West another change—<br> A deeper glow: a rose of fire:<br> A rose of passionate desire<br>Lone burning in a lonely heart. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">A lonely heart; a lonely flood.<br>The wave that glassed her gleaming head<br>And smiling passed, it does not know<br>That gleaming head lies dark and low;<br>The myrtle-tree that bends above,<br>I pray that it may early bud,<br>For under its green boughs sat we—<br>We twain, we only, hand in hand,<br>When Love was lord of all the land—<br>It does not know that she is dead<br>And all is over now with Love,<br>Is over now with Love and me. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Once more, once more, O shining years<br>Gone by; once more, O vanished days<br>Whose hours flew by on iris-wings,<br>Come back and bring my love to me!<br>My voice faints down the wooded ways<br>And dies along the darkling flood.<br>The past is past; I cry in vain,<br>For when did Death an answer deign<br>To Love’s heart-broken questionings?<br>The dead are deaf; dust chokes their ears;<br>Only the rolling river hears<br>Far off the calling of the sea—<br>A shiver strikes through all my blood,<br>Mine eyes are full of sudden tears. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">. . . . .<br>The shadows gather over all,<br> The valley, and the mountains old;<br>Shadow on shadow fast they fall<br> On glooming green and waning gold;<br>And on my heart they gather drear,<br>Damp as with grave-damps, dark with fear. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">O Sorrow, Sorrow, couldst thou leave me<br> Not one brief hour to dream alone?<br>Hast thou not all my days to grieve me?<br> My nights, are they not all thine own?<br>Thou hauntest me at morning light,<br> Thou blackenest the white moonbeams;<br>A hollow voice at noon; at night<br> A crowned ghost, sitting on a throne,<br> Ruling the kingdom of my dreams. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Maker of men, Thou gavest breath,<br>Thou gavest love to all that live,<br>Thou rendest loves and lives apart;<br>Allwise art Thou; who questioneth<br>Thy will, or who can read Thy heart?<br>But couldst Thou not in mercy give<br>A sign to us—one little spark<br>Of sure hope that the end of all<br>Is not concealed beneath the pall,<br>Or wound up with the winding-sheet?<br>Who heedeth aught the preacher saith<br>When eyes wax dim, and limbs grow stark,<br>And fear sits on the darkened bed?<br>The dying man turns to the wall.<br>What hope have we above our dead?—<br>Tense fingers clutching at the dark,<br>And hopeless hands that vainly beat<br>Against the iron doors of Death!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Victor+James+Daley">Victor James Daley</a><div class=q>
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 I cannot end the song with art:
My grief is gray and old—her grave
 Is dug so deep within my heart. 

I.—Her Last Day 
IT was a day of sombre heat:
The still, dense air was void of sound
And life; no wing ..."></div>
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