I wonder if she sang in this old room. Ah, never! No; they tell me that she stood For hours together staring into gloom Out of the prison bars of flesh and blood. So, when the ninth wave drowned her, haply she Wakened, with merging senses, till she blent Into the joy and colour of the sea, One with the purpose of the element. And there, perhaps, she cannot feel the woe Passed in this rotting house, but runs like light Over the billows where the clippers go, One with the blue sea’s pureness of delight; Laughing, perhaps, at that old woe of hers Chained in the cage with fellow-prisoners. He died in that lone cottage near the sea. In the grey morning when the tide was turning, The wards of life slipt back and set him free From cares of meat and dress, from joys and yearning. Then like an old man gathering strength, he strayed Over the beach, and strength came into him, Beauty that never threatened nor betrayed Made bright the eyes that sorrow had made dim; So that upon that stretch of barren sand He knew his dreams; he saw her beauty run With Sorrowful Beauty, laughing, hand in hand; He heard the trumpets blow in Avalon. He saw the golden statue stretching down The wreath, for him, of roses, in a crown. They say that as her husband lay a-dying He clamoured for a chain to beat the hound. They say that all the garden rang with crying That came out of the air, out of the ground, Out of the waste that was his soul, may be, Out of the running wolf-hound of his soul, That had been kennelled in and now broke free Out to the moors where stags go, past control. All through his life his will had kennelled him; Now he was free, and with a hackling fell He snarled out of the body to the dim, To run the spirits with the hounds of hell; To run forever at the quarry gone, The uncaught thing a little further on. So, one by one, Time took them to his keeping, Those broken lanterns that had held his fire; Dust went to dust, and flesh had time for sleeping, And soul the stag escaped the hound desire. And now, perhaps, the memory of their hate Has passed from them, and they are friends again, Laughing at all the trouble of this state Where men and women work each other pain. And in the wind that runs along the glen Beating at cottage doors, they may go by, Exulting now, and helping sorrowing men To do some little good before they die. For from these ploughed-up souls the spirit brings Harvest at last, and sweet from bitter things. FORGET Forget all these, the barren fool in power, The madman in command, the jealous O, The bitter world biting its bitter hour, The cruel now, the happy long ago.