Seven Poems and a Fragment

OLDEST PUPIL.

(motioning the musicians to lower their trumpets)

Not what it leaves behind it in the light

But what it carries with it to the dark

Exalts the soul; nor song nor trumpet-blast

Can call up races from the worsening world

To mend the wrong and mar the solitude

Of the great shade we follow to the tomb.

(Fedelm and the pupils go out carrying the litter. Some play

a mournful music.)

Amid the changeless clamour of the curlew.

And there he can sleep on, not noticing

Although the world be changed from worse to worse,

(They go towards the king holding out their halters)

We are impatient men,

So gather up the halters in your hands.

The ancient right is gone, the new remains

And that is death.

YOUNGEST PUPIL.

Dead faces laugh!

O look upon the moon that’s standing there

The man that dies has the chief part in the story,

And I will mock and mock and mock that image yonder

That evil picture in the sky—no, no—

I have all my strength again, I will outface it.

Are but loose thread, are but loose thread;

THE GIRL.

God loves us for our worth;

But what care I that long for a man’s love.

THE FOOL BY THE ROADSIDE.