AFTER DEATH.

SONNET.

THE curtains were half drawn, the floor was swept

And strewn with rushes, rosemary and may

Lay thick upon the bed on which I lay, Where through the lattice ivy-shadows crept. He leaned above me, thinking that I slept

And could not hear him; but I heard him

say:

"Poor child, poor child :" and as he turned away

Came a deep silence, and I knew he wept.

He did not touch the shroud, or raise the fold

That hid my face, or take my hand in his,

Or ruffle the smooth pillows for my head:

He did not love me living; but once dead He pitied me; and very sweet it is

To know he still is warm though I am cold.

AN END.

LOVE, strong as Death, is dead.

Come, let us make his bed

Among the dying flowers:

A green turf at his head;

And a stone at his feet,

Whereon we may sit

In the quiet evening hours.

He was born in the Spring,

And died before the harvesting:

On the last warm summer day

He left us; he would not stay

For Autumn twilight cold and grey.

Sit we by his grave, and sing

He is gone away.

To few chords and sad and low

Sing we so:

Be our eyes fixed on the grass

Shadow-veiled as the years pass,

While we think of all that was

In the long ago.

MY DREAM.

HEAR now a curious dream I dreamed last night,
Each word whereof is weighed and sifted truth.

I stood beside Euphrates while it swelled Like overflowing Jordan in its youth:

It waxed and coloured sensibly to sight;

Till out of myriad pregnant waves there welled

Young crocodiles, a gaunt blunt-featured crew,

Fresh-hatched perhaps and daubed with birthday dew.

The rest if I should tell, I fear my friend

My closest friend would deem the facts untrue;

And therefore it were wisely left untold;

Yet if you will, why, hear it to the end.

Each crocodile was girt with massive gold

And polished stones that with their wearers grew :

But one there was who waxed beyond the rest,

Wore kinglier girdle and a kingly crown,

Whilst crowns and orbs and sceptres starred his breast.

All gleamed compact and green with scale on scale,

But special burnishment adorned his mail

And special terror weighed upon his frown;

His punier brethren quaked before his tail,

Broad as a rafter, potent as a flail.

So he grew lord and master of his kin:

But who shall tell the tale of all their woes?

An execrable appetite arose,

He battened on them, crunched, and sucked them in.

He knew no law, he feared no binding law,

But ground them with inexorable jaw :

The luscious fat distilled upon his chin,

Exuded from his nostrils and his eyes,

While still like hungry death he fed his maw;

Till every minor crocodile being dead