Poems by Adam Lindsay Gordon

IN MEMORIAM.

(A. L. Gordon.)

    At rest! Hard by the margin of that sea
    Whose sounds are mingled with his noble verse,
    Now lies the shell that never more will house
    The fine, strong spirit of my gifted friend.
    Yea, he who flashed upon us suddenly,
    A shining soul with syllables of fire,
    Who sang the first great songs these lands can claim
    To be their own; the one who did not seem
    To know what royal place awaited him
    Within the Temple of the Beautiful,
    Has passed away; and we who knew him, sit
    Aghast in darkness, dumb with that great grief,
    Whose stature yet we cannot comprehend;
    While over yonder churchyard, hearsed with pines,
    The night-wind sings its immemorial hymn,
    And sobs above a newly-covered grave.

    The bard, the scholar, and the man who lived
    That frank, that open-hearted life which keeps
    The splendid fire of English chivalry
    From dying out; the one who never wronged
    A fellow-man; the faithful friend who judged
    The many, anxious to be loved of him,
    By what he saw, and not by what he heard,
    As lesser spirits do; the brave great soul
    That never told a lie, or turned aside
    To fly from danger; he, I say, was one
    Of that bright company this sin-stained world
    Can ill afford to lose.

                They did not know,
    The hundreds who had read his sturdy verse,
    And revelled over ringing major notes,
    The mournful meaning of the undersong
    Which runs through all he wrote, and often takes
    The deep autumnal, half-prophetic tone
    Of forest winds in March; nor did they think
    That on that healthy-hearted man there lay
    The wild specific curse which seems to cling
    For ever to the Poet's twofold life!

    To Adam Lindsay Gordon, I who laid
    Two years ago on Lionel Michael's grave
    A tender leaf of my regard; yea I,
    Who culled a garland from the flowers of song
    To place where Harpur sleeps; I, left alone,
    The sad disciple of a shining band
    Now gone! to Adam Lindsay Gordon's name
    I dedicate these lines; and if 'tis true
    That, past the darkness of the grave, the soul
    Becomes omniscient, then the bard may stoop
    From his high seat to take the offering,
    And read it with a sigh for human friends,
    In human bonds, and gray with human griefs.

    And having wove and proffered this poor wreath,
    I stand to-day as lone as he who saw
    At nightfall through the glimmering moony mists,
    The last of Arthur on the wailing mere,
    And strained in vain to hear the going voice.

                  Henry Kendall.