Читать книгу Poems of To-Day: an Anthology - Various - Страница 15

  Fear? Yes . . . I heard you saying

  In an Oxford common-room

  Where the hearth-light's kindly raying

  Stript the empanelled walls of gloom,

  Silver groves of candles playing

  In the soft wine turned to bloom—

  At the word I see you now

  Blandly push the wine-boat's prow

  Round the mirror of that scored

  Yellow old mahogany board—

  I confess to one fear! this,

To be buried alive!

        My Lord,

  Your fancy has played amiss.

  Fear not. When in farewell

  While guns toll like a bell

  And the bell tolls like a gun

  Westminster towers call

  Folk and state to your funeral,

  And robed in honours won,

  Beneath the cloudy pall

  Of the lifted shreds of glory

  You lie in the last stall

  Of that grey dormitory—

  Fear not lest mad mischance

  Should find you lapt and shrouded

  Alive in helpless trance

  Though seeming death-beclouded:

  For long ere so you rest

  On that transcendent bier

  Shall we not have addressed

  One summons, one last test,

  To your reluctant ear?

  O believe it! we shall have uttered

  In ultimate entreaty

  A name your soul would hear

  Howsoever thickly shuttered;

  We shall have stooped and muttered

  England! in your cold ear. . . .

  Then, if your great pulse leap

  No more, nor your cheek burn,

  Enough; then shall we learn

  'Tis time for us to weep.