Names Upon a Stone

Across bleak widths of broken sea     A fierce north-easter breaks,     And makes a thunder on the lea     A whiteness of the lakes.     Here, while beyond the rainy stream     The wild winds sobbing blow,     I see the river of my dream     Four wasted years ago.     Narrara of the waterfalls,     The darling of the hills,     Whose home is under mountain walls     By many-luted rills!     Her bright green nooks and channels cool     I never more may see;     But, ah! the Past was beautiful     The sights that used to be.     There was a rock-pool in a glen     Beyond Narraras sands;     The mountains shut it in from men     In flowerful fairy lands;     But once we found its dwelling-place     The lovely and the lone     And, in a dream, I stooped to trace     Our names upon a stone.     Above us, where the star-like moss     Shone on the wet, green wall     That spanned the straitened stream across,     We saw the waterfall     A silver singer far away,     By folded hills and hoar;     Its voice is in the woods to-day     A voice I hear no more.     I wonder if the leaves that screen     The rock-pool of the past     Are yet as soft and cool and green     As when we saw them last!     I wonder if that tender thing,     The moss, has overgrown     The letters by the limpid spring     Our names upon the stone!     Across the face of scenes we know     There may have come a change     The places seen four years ago     Perhaps would now look strange.     To you, indeed, they cannot be     What haply once they were:     A friend beloved by you and me     No more will greet us there.     Because I know the filial grief     That shrinks beneath the touch     The noble love whose words are brief     I will not say too much;     But often when the night-winds strike     Across the sighing rills,     I think of him whose life was like     The rock-pools in the hills.     A beauty like the light of song     Is in my dreams, that show     The grand old man who lived so long     As spotless as the snow.     A fitting garland for the dead     I cannot compass yet;     But many things he did and said     I never will forget.     In dells where once we used to rove     The slow, sad water grieves;     And ever comes from glimmering grove     The liturgy of leaves.     But time and toil have marked my face,     My heart has older grown     Since, in the woods, I stooped to trace     Our names upon the stone.