And Time flowed on till all the realm forgot The great King lying in the low chalk hills; Only the busy water dripping through His hard white bones knew of him lying there. DEATH When I am dead a few poor souls shall grieve As I grieved for my brother long ago. Scarce did my eyes grow dim, I had forgotten him; I was far-off hearing the spring winds blow, And many summers burned When, though still reeling with my eyes aflame, I heard that faded name Whispered one Spring amid the hurrying world From which, years gone, he turned. I looked up at my windows and I saw The trees, thin spectres sucked forth by the moon. The air was very still Above a distant hill; It was the hour of night's full silver moon. 'O are thou there my brother?' my soul cried; And all the pale stars down bright rivers wept, As my heart sadly crept About the empty hills, bathed in that light That lapped him when he died. Ah! it was cold, so cold; do I not know How dead my heart on that remembered day! Clear in a far-away place I see his delicate face Just as he called me from my solitary play, Giving into my hands a tiny tree. We planted it in the dark, blossomless ground Gravely, without a sound; Then back I went and left him standing by His birthday gift to me. In that far land perchance it quietly grows Drinking the rain, making a pleasant shade; Birds in its branches fly Out of the fathomless sky Where worlds of circling light arise and fade. Blindly it quivers in the bright flood of day, Or drowned in multitudinous shouts of rain Glooms o'er the dark-veiled plain-- Buried below, the ghost that's in his bones Dreams in the sodden clay. And, while he faded, drunk with beauty's eyes I kissed bright girls and laughed deep in dumb trees, That stared fixt in the air Like madmen in despair Gaped up from earth with the escaping breeze. I saw earth's exaltation slowly creep Out of their myriad sky-embracing veins. I laughed along the lanes, Meeting Death riding in from the hollow seas Through black-wreathed woods asleep. I laughed, I swaggered on the cold hard ground-- Through the grey air trembled a falling wave-- 'Thou'rt pale, O Death!' I cried, Mocking him in my pride; And passing I dreamed not of that lonely grave, But of leaf-maidens whose pale, moon-like hands Above the tree-foam waved in the icy air, Sweeping with shining hair Through the green-tinted sky, one moment fled Out of immortal lands. One windless Autumn night the Moon came out In a white sea of cloud, a field of snow; In darkness shaped of trees, I sank upon my knees And watched her shining, from the small wood below-- Faintly Death flickered in an owl's far cry--- We floated soundless in the great gulf of space, Her light upon my face-- Immortal, shining in that dark wood I knelt And knew I could not die.