Dedication From "Astrophel and Other Poems"

The sea of the years that endure not     Whose tide shall endure till we die     And know what the seasons assure not,     If death be or life be a lie,     Sways hither the spirit and thither,     A waif in the swing of the sea     Whose wrecks are of memories that wither     As leaves of a tree.     We hear not and hail not with greeting     The sound of the wings of the years,     The storm of the sound of them beating,     That none till it pass from him hears:     But tempest nor calm can imperil     The treasures that fade not or fly;     Change bids them not change and be sterile,     Death bids them not die.     Hearts plighted in youth to the royal     High service of hope and of song,     Sealed fast for endurance as loyal,     And proved of the years as they throng,     Conceive not, believe not, and fear not     That age may be other than youth;     That faith and that friendship may hear not     And utter not truth.     Not yesterday's light nor to-morrow's     Gleams nearer or clearer than gleams,     Though joys be forgotten and sorrows     Forgotten as changes of dreams,     The dawn of the days unforgotten     That noon could eclipse not or slay,     Whose fruits were as children begotten     Of dawn upon day.     The years that were flowerful and fruitless,     The years that were fruitful and dark,     The hopes that were radiant and rootless,     The hopes that were winged for their mark,     Lie soft in the sepulchres fashioned     Of hours that arise and subside,     Absorbed and subdued and impassioned,     In pain or in pride.     But far in the night that entombs them     The starshine as sunshine is strong,     And clear through the cloud that resumes them     Remembrance, a light and a song,     Rings lustrous as music and hovers     As birds that impend on the sea,     And thoughts that their prison-house covers     Arise and are free.     Forgetfulness deep as a prison     Holds days that are dead for us fast     Till the sepulchre sees rearisen     The spirit whose reign is the past,     Disentrammelled of darkness, and kindled     With life that is mightier than death,     When the life that obscured it has dwindled     And passed as a breath.     But time nor oblivion may darken     Remembrance whose name will be joy     While memory forgets not to hearken,     While manhood forgets not the boy     Who heard and exulted in hearing     The songs of the sunrise of youth     Ring radiant above him, unfearing     And joyous as truth.     Truth, winged and enkindled with rapture     And sense of the radiance of yore,     Fulfilled you with power to recapture     What never might singer before,     The life, the delight, and the sorrow     Of troublous and chivalrous years     That knew not of night or of morrow,     Of hopes or of fears.     But wider the wing and the vision     That quicken the spirit have spread     Since memory beheld with derision     Man's hope to be more than his dead.     From the mists and the snows and the thunders     Your spirit has brought for us forth     Light, music, and joy in the wonders     And charms of the north.     The wars and the woes and the glories     That quicken and lighten and rain     From the clouds of its chronicled stories,     The passion, the pride, and the pain,     Whose echoes were mute and the token     Was lost of the spells that they spake,     Rise bright at your bidding, unbroken     Of ages that break.     For you, and for none of us other,     Time is not: the dead that must live     Hold commune with you as a brother     By grace of the life that you give.     The heart that was in them is in you,     Their soul in your spirit endures:     The strength of their song is the sinew     Of this that is yours.     Hence is it that life, everlasting     As light and as music, abides     In the sound of the surge of it, casting     Sound back to the surge of the tides,     Till sons of the sons of the Norsemen     Watch, hurtling to windward and lee,     Round England, unbacked of her horsemen,     The steeds of the sea.