After Sunset - Sonnets

Si quis piorum Manibus locus. I.     Straight from the suns grave in the deep clear west     A sweet strong wind blows, glad of life: and I,     Under the soft keen stardawn whence the sky     Takes life renewed, and all nights godlike breast     Palpitates, gradually revealed at rest     By growth and change of ardours felt on high,     Make onward, till the last flame fall and die     And all the world by nights broad hand lie blest.     Haply, meseems, as from that edge of death,     Whereon the day lies dark, a brightening breath     Blows more of benediction than the morn,     So from the graves whereon grief gazing saith     That half our heart of life there lies forlorn     May light or breath at least of hope be born. II.     The wind was soft before the sunset fled:     Now, while the cloud-enshrouded corpse of day     Is lowered along a red funereal way     Down to the dark that knows not white from red,     A clear sheer breeze against the night makes head,     Serene, but sure of life as ere a ray     Springs, or the dusk of dawn knows red from grey,     Being as a soul that knows not quick from dead.     From far beyond the sunset, far above,     Full toward the starry soundless east it blows     Bright as a childs breath breathing on a rose,     Smooth to the sense as plume of any dove;     Till more and more as darkness grows and glows     Silence and night seem likest life and love. III.     If light of life outlive the set of sun     That men call death and end of all things, then     How should not that which life held best for men     And proved most precious, though it seem undone     By force of death and woful victory won,     Be first and surest of revival, when     Death shall bow down to life arisen again?     So shall the soul seen be the self-same one     That looked and spake with even such lips and eyes     As love shall doubt not then to recognise,     And all bright thoughts and smiles of all time past     Revive, transfigured, but in spirit and sense     None other than we knew, for evidence     That loves last mortal word was not his last