In Memory of Edward Butler

A voice of grave, deep emphasis     Is in the woods to-night;     No sound of radiant day is this,     No cadence of the light.     Here in the fall and flights of leaves     Against grey widths of sea,     The spirit of the forests grieves     For lost Persephone.     The fair divinity that roves     Where many waters sing     Doth miss her daughter of the groves     The golden-headed Spring.     She cannot find the shining hand     That once the rose caressed;     There is no blossom on the land,     No bird in last years nest.     Here, where this strange Demeter weeps     This large, sad life unseen     Where Julys strong, wild torrent leaps     The wet hill-heads between,     I sit and listen to the grief,     The high, supreme distress,     Which sobs above the fallen leaf     Like human tenderness!     Where sighs the sedge and moans the marsh,     The hermit plover calls;     The voice of straitened streams is harsh     By windy mountain walls;     There is no gleam upon the hills     Of last Octobers wings;     The shining lady of the rills     Is with forgotten things.     Now where the lands worn face is grey     And storm is on the wave,     What flower is left to bear away     To Edward Butlers grave?     What tender rose of song is here     That I may pluck and send     Across the hills and seas austere     To my lamented friend?     There is no blossom left at all;     But this white winter leaf,     Whose glad green life is past recall,     Is token of my grief.     Where love is tending growths of grace,     The first-born of the Spring,     Perhaps there may be found a place     For my pale offering.     For this heroic Irish heart     We miss so much to-day,     Whose life was of our lives a part,     What words have I to say?     Because I know the noble woe     That shrinks beneath the touch     The pain of brothers stricken low     I will not say too much.     But often in the lonely space     When night is on the land,     I dream of a departed face     A gracious, vanished hand.     And when the solemn waters roll     Against the outer steep,     I see a great, benignant soul     Beside me in my sleep.     Yea, while the frost is on the ways     With barren banks austere,     The friend I knew in other days     Is often very near.     I do not hear a single tone;     But where this brother gleams,     The elders of the seasons flown     Are with me in my dreams.     The saintly face of Stenhouse turns     His kind old eyes I see;     And Pell and Ridley from their urns     Arise and look at me.     By Butlers side the lights reveal     The father of his fold,     I start from sleep in tears, and feel     That I am growing old.     Where Edward Butler sleeps, the wave     Is hardly ever heard;     But now the leaves above his grave     By Augusts songs are stirred.     The slope beyond is green and still,     And in my dreams I dream     The hill is like an Irish hill     Beside an Irish stream.