Читать книгу Poems, 1908-1919 - Drinkwater John - Страница 10

The shadows that companion me

From chronicles and poetry

More constant and substantial are

Than these my men familiar,

Who draw with me uncertain breath

A little while this side of death;

For you, my friend, may fail to keep

To-morrow’s tryst, so darkly deep

The motions mutable that give

To flesh its brief prerogative,

And in the pleasant hours we make

Together for devotion’s sake,

Always the testament I see

That is our twin mortality.

But those from the recorded page

Keep an eternal pilgrimage.

They stedfastly inhabit here

With no mortality to fear,

And my communion with them

Ails not in the mind’s stratagem

Against the sudden blow, the date

That once must fall unfortunate.

They fret not nor persuade, and when

These graduates I entertain,

I grieve not that I too must fall

As you, my friend, to funeral,

But rather find example there

That, when my boughs of time are bare,

And nothing more the body’s chance

Governs my careful circumstance,

I shall, upon that later birth,

Walk in immortal fields of earth.