My wages taken, and in my heart Let me be gathered to the quiet west, Death. William Ernest Henley [1849-1903] "IN AFTER DAYS" IN after days when grasses high I shall not see the morning sky; But yet, now living, fain were I Austin Dobson [1840 "CALL ME NOT DEAD" CALL me not dead when I, indeed, have gone High and most glorious poets! Let thanksgiving Epilogue 3283 To-morrow (who can say?) Shakespeare may pass, Thinking of Beatrice, and listening still To chanted hymns that sound from the heavenly hill." EPILOGUE From "Asolando " AT the midnight in the silence of the sleep-time, When you set your fancies free, Will they pass to where by death, fools think, imprisoned Low he lies who once so loved you, whom you loved so, -Pity me? Oh to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken! What had I on earth to do With the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly? -Being-who? One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake. No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be, There as here!" Robert Browning [1812-1889] CROSSING THE BAR SUNSET and evening star, And one clear call for me! And may there be no moaning of the bar, But such a tide as moving seems asleep, Too full for sound and foam, When that which drew from out the boundless deep Turns again home. Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark! And may there be no sadness of farewell, When I embark; For though from out our bourne of Time and Place The flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have crossed the bar. Alfred Tennyson [1809-1892] L'ENVOI WHEN Earth's last picture is painted, and the tubes are twisted and dried, When the oldest colors have faded, and the youngest critic has died, We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it-lie down for an eon or two, Till the Master of All Good Workmen shall set us to work anew! And those that were good shall be happy: they shall sit in a golden chair; They shall splash at a ten-league canvas with brushes of comets' hair; They shall find real saints to draw from--Magdalene, Peter, and Paul; They shall work for an age at a sitting and never be tired at all! And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame; And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame; But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his sepa rate star Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of Things as They Are! Rudyard Kipling [1865 "THEY ARE ALL GONE" FRIENDS DEPARTED THEY are all gone into the world of light! It glows and glitters in my cloudy breast, Or those faint beams in which this hill is dressed I see them walking in an air of glory, Whose light doth trample on my days: O holy Hope! and high Humility, High as the heavens above! These are your walks, and you have showed them me, To kindle my cold love. Dear, beauteous Death! the jewel of the Just! Shining nowhere, but in the dark; What mysteries do lie beyond thy dust, Could man outlook that mark! He that hath found some fledged bird's nest may know, At first sight, if the bird be flown; But what fair dell or grove he sings in now, That is to him unknown. And yet, as Angels in some brighter dreams So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes, |