You first shall sing a song of waters blue, Paphos and Cnidos in the summer seas, And one who guides her swan-drawn chariot through The white-shored Cyclades;
And I will take the second turn of song, Of floating tresses in the foam and surge Where Nereid maids about the sea-god throng; And night shall have her dirge.
I would we had carried him far away To the light of this south sun land. Where the hills lean down to some red-rocked bay And the sea's blue breaks into snow-white spray As the wave dies out on the sand.
Not there, not there, where the winds deface! Where the storm and the cloud race by! But far away in this flowerful place Where endless summers retouch, retrace, What flowers find heart to die.
And if ever the souls of the loved, set free, Come back to the souls that stay, I could dream he would sit for a while with me Where I sit by this wonderful tideless sea And look to the red-rocked bay,
By the high cliff's edge where the wild weeds twine, And he would not speak or move, But his eyes would gaze from his soul at mine, My eyes that would answer without one sign, And that were enough for love.
And I think I should feel as the sun went round That he was not there any more, But dews were wet on the grass-grown mound On the bed of my love lying underground, And evening pale on the shore.
It was a tomb in Flanders, old and grey, A knight in armour, lying dead, unknown Among the long-forgotten, yet the stone Cried out for vengeance where the dead man lay;
No name was chiselled at his side to say What wrongs his spirit thirsted to atone, Only the armour with green moss o'ergrown, And those grim words no years had worn away.
It may be haply in the songs of old His deeds were wonders to sweet music set, His name the thunder of a battle call, Among the things forgotten and untold; His only record is the dead man's threat,-- "An hour will come that shall atone for all!"
When the last bitterness was past, she bore Her singing Cæsar to the Garden Hill, Her fallen pitiful dead emperor. She lifted up the beggar's cloak he wore --The one thing living he would not kill-- And on those lips of his that sang no more, That world-loathed head which she found lovely still, Her cold lips closed, in death she had her will.