Is memory with your Marian gone to rest, Dead with the dead? For ere she left us, when we met, you prest My hand, and said ‘I come with your spring-flowers!’ You came not, friend; My birds would sing, You heard not. Take then this spring-flower I send, This song of spring. * * * And you that now are lonely, and with grief Sit face to face, Might find a flickering glimmer of relief In change of place. What use to brood? This mingled life of pains And joys to me, Despite of every Faith and Creed, remains The Mystery. * * * The silver year should cease to mourn and sigh— Not long to wait— So close are we, dear Mary, you and I To that dim gate.” Close indeed were they both “to that dim gate.” She died in April 1890—and in 1892 the great writer, and the still more kindly man, answered the “one clear call,” and embarked to “meet his Pilot face to face.” * * * * * Thus far Sir Courtenay Boyle had written his Introduction to the Memoirs when to him also came the “one clear call,” and he too embarked to “meet his Pilot face to face.”[6] Footnote 6: Sir Courtenay Boyle died 19th May 1901. The papers which now form the Supplementary Chapter arrived too late. It was his intention to have incorporated them in the book, and they would doubtless have necessitated some slight modification in his Introduction. I have preferred to leave his work as he left it, and keep the supplementary papers separate. MURIEL S. BOYLE. _September 1901._ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration: _J. Russell & Sons, photo._ _Courtenay Boyle_ ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ PREFACE