On A Friend Recently Dead

I         The stream goes fast.         When this that is the present is the past,         'Twill be as all the other pasts have been,         A failing hill, a daily dimming scene,         A far strange port with foreign life astir         The ship has left behind, the voyager         Will never return to; no, nor see again,         Though with a heart full of longing he may strain         Back to project himself, and once more count         The boats, the whitened walls that climbed the mount,         Mark the cathedral's roof, the gathered spires,         The vanes, the windows red with sunset's fires,         The gap of the market-place, and watch again         The coloured groups of women, and the men         Lounging at ease along the low stone wall         That fringed the harbour; and there beyond it all         High pastures morning and evening scattered with small         Specks that were grazing sheep....    It is all gone,         It is all blurred that once so brightly shone;         He cannot now with the old clearness see         The rust upon one ringbolt of the quay.         II         And yesterday is dead, and you are dead.         Your duplicate that hovered in my head         Thins like blown wreathing smoke, your features grow         To interrupted outlines, and all will go         Unless I fight dispersal with my will...         So I shall do it ... but too conscious still         That, when we walked together, had I known         How soon your journey was to end alone,         I should not, now that you have gone from view,         Be gathering derelict odds and ends of you;         But in the intense lucidity of pain         Your likeness would have burnt into my brain.         I did not know; lovable and unique,         As volatile as a bubble and as weak,         You sat with me, and my eyes registered         This thing and that, and sluggishly I heard         Your voice, remembering here and there a word.         III         So in my mind there's not much left of you,         And that disintegrates; but while a few         Patches of memory's mirror still are bright         Nor your reflected image there has quite         Faded and slipped away, it will be well         To search for each surviving syllable         Of voice and body and soul.    And some I'll find         Right to my hand, and some tangled and blind         Among the obscure weeds that fill the mind.         A pause....         I plunge my thought's hooked resolute claws         Deep in the turbid past.    Like drowned things in the jaws         Of grappling-irons, your features to the verge         Of conscious knowledge one by one emerge.         Can I not make these scattered things unite? ...         I knit my brows and clench my eyelids tight         And focus to a point....    Streams of dark pinkish light         Convolve; and now spasmodically there flit         Clear pictures of you as you used to sit:,         The way you crossed your legs stretched in your chair,         Elbow at rest and tumbler in the air,         Jesting on books and politics and worse,         And still good company when most perverse.         Capricious friend!         Here in this room not long before the end,         Here in this very room six months ago         You poised your foot and joked and chuckled so.         Beyond the window shook the ash-tree bough,         You saw books, pictures, as I see them now,         The sofa then was blue, the telephone         Listened upon the desk, and softly shone         Even as now the fire-irons in the grate,         And the little brass pendulum swung, a seal of fate         Stamping the minutes; and the curtains on window and door         Just moved in the air; and on the dark boards of the floor         These same discreetly-coloured rugs were lying...         And then you never had a thought of dying.         IV         You are not here, and all the things in the room         Watch me alone in the gradual growing gloom.         The you that thought and felt are I know not where,         The you that sat and drank in that arm-chair             Will never sit there again.             For months you have lain             Under a graveyard's green             In some place abroad where I've never been.             Perhaps there is a stone over you,             Or only the wood and the earth and the grass cover you.         But it doesn't much matter; for dead and decayed you lie         Like a million million others who felt they would never die,         Like Alexander and Helen the beautiful,         And the last collier hanged for murdering his trull;         All done with and buried in an equal bed.         V         Yes, you are dead like all the other dead.         You are not here, but I am here alone.         And evening falls, fusing tree, water and stone         Into a violet cloth, and the frail ash-tree hisses         With a soft sharpness like a fall of mounded grain.         And a steamer softly puffing along the river passes,         Drawing a file of barges; and silence falls again.         And a bell tones; and the evening darkens; and in sparse rank         The greenish lights well out along the other bank.         I have no force left now; the sights and sounds impinge         Upon me unresisted, like raindrops on the mould.         And, striving not against my melancholy mood,         Limp as a door that hangs upon one failing hinge,         Limp, with slack marrowless arms and thighs, I sit and brood         On death and death and death.    And quiet, thin and cold,         Following of this one friend the hopeless, helpless ghost,         The weak appealing wraiths of notable men of old         Who died, pass through the air; and then, host after host,         Innumerable, overwhelming, without form,         Rolling across the sky in awful silent storm,         The myriads of the undifferentiated dead         Whom none recorded, or of whom the record faded.         O spectacle appallingly sublime!         I see the universe one long disastrous strife,         And in the staggering abysses of backward and forward time         Death chasing hard upon the heels of creating life.         And I, I see myself as one of a heap of stones         Wetted a moment to life as the flying wave goes over,         Onward and never returning, leaving no mark behind.         There's nothing to hope for.    Blank cessation numbs my mind,         And I feel my heart thumping gloomy against its cover,         My heavy belly hanging from my bones.         VI             Below in the dark street             There is a tap of feet,             I rise and angrily meditate             How often I have let of late             This thought of death come over me.             How often I will sit and backward trace             The deathly history of the human race,             The ripples of men who chattered and were still,             Known and unknown, older and older, until             Before man's birth I fall, shivering and aghast             Through a hole in the bottom of the remotest past;                 Till painfully my spirit throws                 Her giddiness off; and then as soon             As I recover and try to think again,                 Life seems like death; and all my body grows             Icily cold, and all my brain             Cold as the jagged craters of the moon....             And I wonder is it not strange that I             Who thus have heard eternity's black laugh                 And felt its freezing breath,             Should sometimes shut it out from memory             So as to play quite prettily with death,                 And turn an easy epitaph?         I can hear a voice whispering in my brain:         "Why this is the old futility again!         Criminal! day by day         Your own life is ebbing swiftly away.         And what have you done with it,         Except to become a maudlin hypocrite?"             Yes, I know, I know;         One should not think of death or the dead overmuch; but one's mind's made so         That at certain times the roads of thought all lead to death,         And false reasoning clouds one's soul as a window with breath             Is clouded in winter's air,             And all the faith one may have         Lies useless and dead as a body in the grave.