To John Nichol - Sonnets

I.     Friend of the dead, and friend of all my days     Even since they cast off boyhood, I salute     The song saluting friends whose songs are mute     With full burnt-offerings of clear-spirited praise.     That since our old young years our several ways     Have led through fields diverse of flower and fruit     Yet no cross wind has once relaxed the root     We set long since beneath the sundawns rays,     The root of trust whence towered the trusty tree,     Friendship this only and duly might impel     My song to salutation of your own;     More even than praise of one unseen of me     And loved the starry spirit of Dobell,     To mine by light and music only known. II.     But more than this what moves me most of all     To leave not all unworded and unsped     The whole hearts greeting of my thanks unsaid     Scarce needs this sign, that from my tongue should fall     His name whom sorrow and reverent love recall,     The sign to friends on earth of that dear head     Alive, which now long since untimely dead     The wan grey waters covered for a pall.     Their trustless reaches dense with tangling stems     Took never life more taintless of rebuke,     More pure and perfect, more serene and kind,     Than when those clear eyes closed beneath the Thames,     And made the now more hallowed name of Luke     Memorial to us of morning left behind.