Barking Hall: A Year After

Still the sovereign trees     Make the sundawn's breeze     More bright, more sweet, more heavenly than it rose,     As wind and sun fulfil     Their living rapture: still     Noon, dawn, and evening thrill     With radiant change the immeasurable repose     Wherewith the woodland wilds lie blest     And feel how storms and centuries rock them still to rest.     Still the love-lit place     Given of God such grace     That here was born on earth a birth divine     Gives thanks with all its flowers     Through all their lustrous hours,     From all its birds and bowers     Gives thanks that here they felt her sunset shine     Where once her sunrise laughed, and bade     The life of all the living things it lit be glad.     Soft as light and strong     Rises yet their song     And thrills with pride the cedar-crested lawn     And every brooding dove.     But she, beloved above     All utterance known of love,     Abides no more the change of night and dawn,     Beholds no more with earth-born eye     These woods that watched her waking here where all things die.     Not the light that shone     When she looked thereon     Shines on them or shall shine for ever here.     We know not, save when sleep     Slays death, who fain would keep     His mystery dense and deep,     Where shines the smile we held and hold so dear.     Dreams only, thrilled and filled with love,     Bring back its light ere dawn leave nought alive above.     Nought alive awake     Sees the strong dawn break     On all the dreams that dying night bade live.     Yet scarce the intolerant sense     Of day's harsh evidence     How came their word and whence     Strikes dumb the song of thanks it bids them give,     The joy that answers as it heard     And lightens as it saw the light that spake the word.     Night and sleep and dawn     Pass with dreams withdrawn:     But higher above them far than noon may climb     Love lives and turns to light     The deadly noon of night.     His fiery spirit of sight     Endures no curb of change or darkling time.     Even earth and transient things of earth     Even here to him bear witness not of death but birth.