If love be strong as death, By what so natural breath As thine could this be said? By what so lovely way Could love send word to say He lives and is not dead? Such word alone were fit for only thee, If his and thine have met Where spirits rise and set, His whom we see not, thine whom scarce we see: His there new-born, as thou New-born among us now; His, here so fruitful-souled, Now veiled and silent here, Now dumb as thou last year, A ghost of one year old: If lights that change their sphere in changing meet, Some ray might his not give To thine who wast to live, And make thy present with his past life sweet? Let dreams that laugh or weep, All glad and sad dreams, sleep; Truth more than dreams is dear. Let thoughts that change and fly, Sweet thoughts and swift, go by; More than all thought is here. More than all hope can forge or memory feign The life that in our eyes, Made out of love's life, lies, And flower-like fed with love for sun and rain. Twice royal in its root The sweet small olive-shoot Here set in sacred earth; Twice dowered with glorious grace From either heaven-born race First blended in its birth; Fair God or Genius of so fair an hour, For love of either name Twice crowned, with love and fame, Guard and be gracious to the fair-named flower. _October 19, 1875._ [Footnote 1: Oliver Madox Brown died November 5, 1874, in his twentieth year.] EX-VOTO When their last hour shall rise Pale on these mortal eyes, Herself like one that dies, And kiss me dying The cold last kiss, and fold Close round my limbs her cold Soft shade as raiment rolled And leave them lying, If aught my soul would say Might move to hear me pray The birth-god of my day That he might hearken, This grace my heart should crave, To find no landward grave That worldly springs make brave, World's winters darken, Nor grow through gradual hours The cold blind seed of flowers Made by new beams and showers From limbs that moulder, Nor take my part with earth, But find for death's new birth A bed of larger girth, More chaste and colder. Not earth's for spring and fall, Not earth's at heart, not all Earth's making, though men call Earth only mother, Not hers at heart she bare Me, but thy child, O fair Sea, and thy brother's care, The wind thy brother. Yours was I born, and ye, The sea-wind and the sea, Made all my soul in me A song for ever, A harp to string and smite For love's sake of the bright Wind and the sea's delight, To fail them never: Not while on this side death I hear what either saith And drink of either's breath With heart's thanksgiving That in my veins like wine Some sharp salt blood of thine, Some springtide pulse of brine, Yet leaps up living.