Robert Parkes

High travelling winds by royal hill     Their awful anthem sing,     And songs exalted flow and fill     The caverns of the spring.     To-night across a wild wet plain     A shadow sobs and strays;     The trees are whispering in the rain     Of long departed days.     I cannot say what forest saith     Its words are strange to me:     I only know that in its breath     Are tones that used to be.     Yea, in these deep dim solitudes     I hear a sound I know     The voice that lived in Penrith woods     Twelve weary years ago.     And while the hymn of other years     Is on a listening land,     The Angel of the Past appears     And leads me by the hand;     And takes me over moaning wave,     And tracts of sleepless change,     To set me by a lonely grave     Within a lonely range.     The halo of the beautiful     Is round the quiet spot;     The grass is deep and green and cool,     Where sound of life is not.     Here in this lovely lap of bloom,     The grace of glen and glade,     That tender days and nights illume,     My gentle friend was laid.     I do not mark the shell that lies     Beneath the touching flowers;     I only see the radiant eyes     Of other scenes and hours.     I only turn, by grief inspired,     Like some forsaken thing,     To look upon a life retired     As hushed Bethesdas spring.     The glory of unblemished days     Is on the silent mound     The light of years, too pure for praise;     I kneel on holy ground!     Here is the clay of one whose mind     Was fairer than the dew,     The sweetest nature of his kind     I haply ever knew.     This Christian, walking on the white     Clear paths apart from strife,     Kept far from all the heat and light     That fills his fathers life.     The clamour and exceeding flame     Were never in his days:     A higher object was his aim     Than thrones of shine and praise.     Ah! like an English April psalm,     That floats by sea and strand,     He passed away into the calm     Of the Eternal Land.     The chair he filled is set aside     Upon his fathers floor;     In morning hours, at eventide,     His step is heard no more.     No more his face the forest knows;     His voice is of the past;     But from his life of beauty flows     A radiance that will last.     Yea, from the hours that heard his speech     High shining memries give     That fine example which will teach     Our children how to live.     Here, kneeling in the body, far     From grave of flower and dew,     My friend beyond the path of star,     I say these words to you.     Though you were as a fleeting flame     Across my road austere,     The memory of your face became     A thing for ever dear.     I never have forgotten yet     The Christians gentle touch;     And, since the time when last we met,     You know Ive suffered much.     I feel that I have given pain     By certain words and deeds,     But stricken here with Sorrows rain,     My contrite spirit bleeds.     For your sole sake I rue the blow,     But this assurance send:     I smote, in noon, the public foe,     But not the private friend.     I know that once I wronged your sire,     But since that awful day     My soul has passed through blood and fire,     My head is very grey.     Here let me pause! From years like yours     There ever flows and thrives     The splendid blessing which endures     Beyond our little lives.     From lonely lands across the wave     Is sent to-night by me     This rose of reverence for the grave     Beside the mountain lea.