O beauty doomed and perfect for an hour, Leaping along the verge of death and night, You show me dauntless Youth that went to fight Four long years past, discovering pride and power. You die but in our dreams, who watch you fall Knowing that to-morrow you will dance again. But not to ebbing music were they slain Who sleep in ruined graves, beyond recall; Who, following phantom-glory, friend and foe, Into the darkness that was War must go; Blind; banished from desire. O mortal heart Be still; you have drained the cup; you have played your part. MEMORY When I was young my heart and head were light, And I was gay and feckless as a colt Out in the fields, with morning in the may, Wind on the grass, wings in the orchard bloom. O thrilling sweet, my joy, when life was free, And all the paths led on from hawthorn-time Across the carolling meadows into June. But now my heart is heavy-laden. I sit Burning my dreams away beside the fire: For death has made me wise and bitter and strong; And I am rich in all that I have lost. O starshine on the fields of long-ago, Bring me the darkness and the nightingale; Dim wealds of vanished summer, peace of home, And silence; and the faces of my friends. TO A VERY WISE MAN I Fires in the dark you build; tall quivering flames In the huge midnight forest of the unknown. Your soul is full of cities with dead names, And blind-faced, earth-bound gods of bronze and stone Whose priests and kings and lust-begotten lords Watch the procession of their thundering hosts, Or guard relentless fanes with flickering swords And wizardry of ghosts. II In a strange house I woke; heard overhead Hastily-thudding feet and a muffled scream... (Is death like that?) ... I quaked uncomforted, Striving to frame to-morrow in a dream Of woods and sliding pools and cloudless day. (You know how bees come into a twilight room From dazzling afternoon, then sail away Out of the curtained gloom.) III You understand my thoughts; though, when you think, You're out beyond the boundaries of my brain. I'm but a bird at dawn that cries, 'chink, chink'-- A garden-bird that warbles in the rain. And you're the flying-man, the speck that steers A careful course; far down the verge of day, Half-way across the world. Above the years You soar ... Is death so bad? ... I wish you'd say. EARLY CHRONOLOGY Slowly the daylight left our listening faces. Professor Brown, with level baritone, Discoursed into the dusk. Five thousand years He guided us through scientific spaces Of excavated History, till the lone Roads of research grew blurred, and in our ears Time was the rumoured tongues of vanished races, And Thought a chartless Age of Ice and Stone.