In Memoriam. - A. L. Gordon.

At rest! Hard by the margin of that sea     Whose sounds are mingled with his noble verse,     Now lies the shell that never more will house     The fine, strong spirit of my gifted friend.     Yea, he who flashed upon us suddenly,     A shining soul with syllables of fire,     Who sang the first great songs these lands can claim     To be their own; the one who did not seem     To know what royal place awaited him     Within the Temple of the Beautiful,     Has passed away; and we who knew him, sit     Aghast in darkness, dumb with that great grief,     Whose stature yet we cannot comprehend;     While over yonder churchyard, hearsed with pines,     The night-wind sings its immemorial hymn,     And sobs above a newly-covered grave.     The bard, the scholar, and the man who lived     That frank, that open-hearted life which keeps     The splendid fire of English chivalry     From dying out; the one who never wronged     A fellow-man; the faithful friend who judged     The many, anxious to be loved of him,     By what he saw, and not by what he heard,     As lesser spirits do; the brave great soul     That never told a lie, or turned aside     To fly from danger; he, I say, was one     Of that bright company this sin-stained world     Can ill afford to lose.     They did not know,     The hundreds who had read his sturdy verse,     And revelled over ringing major notes,     The mournful meaning of the undersong     Which runs through all he wrote, and often takes     The deep autumnal, half-prophetic tone     Of forest winds in March; nor did they think     That on that healthy-hearted man there lay     The wild specific curse which seems to cling     For ever to the Poets twofold life!     To Adam Lindsay Gordon, I who laid     Two years ago on Lionel Michaels grave     A tender leaf of my regard; yea I,     Who culled a garland from the flowers of song     To place where Harpur sleeps; I, left alone,     The sad disciple of a shining band     Now gone! to Adam Lindsay Gordons name     I dedicate these lines; and if tis true     That, past the darkness of the grave, the soul     Becomes omniscient, then the bard may stoop     From his high seat to take the offering,     And read it with a sigh for human friends,     In human bonds, and gray with human griefs.     And having wove and proffered this poor wreath,     I stand to-day as lone as he who saw     At nightfall through the glimmering moony mists,     The last of Arthur on the wailing mere,     And strained in vain to hear the going voice.