Our fullest throat of song is silent, hushed

In Autumn, when the songless woods are still,

And with October's boding hectic flushed

Slowly the year disrobes. A passionate thrill

Of strange proud sorrow pulses through the land,

His land, his England, which he loved so well:

And brows bend low, as slow from strand to strand

The Poet's passing bell

Sends forth its solemn note, and every heart

Chills, and sad tears to many an eyelid start.

Sad tears in sooth! And yet not wholly so.

Exquisite echoes of his own swan-song

Forbid mere murmuring mournfulness; the glow

Of its great hope illumes us. Sleep, thou strong

Full tide, as over the unmeaning bar

Fares this unfaltering darer of the deep,

Beaconed by a Great Light, the pilot-star

Of valiant souls, who keep

Through the long strife of thought-life free from scathe

The luminous guidance of the larger faith.

No sadness of farewell? Great Singer, crowned

With lustrous laurel, facing that far light,

In whose white radiance dark seems whelmed and drowned,

And death a passing shade, of meaning slight;

Sunset, and evening star, and that clear call,

The twilight shadow, and the evening bell,

Bring naught of gloom for thee. Whate'er befall

Thou must indeed fare well.

But we—we have but memories now, and love

The plaint of fond regret will scarce reprove.

Great singer, he, and great among the great,

Or greatness hath no sure abiding test.

The poet's splendid pomp, the shining state

Of royal singing robes, were his, confest,

By slowly growing certitude of fame,

Since first, a youth, he found fresh-opening portals

To Beauty's Pleasure-House. Ranked with acclaim

Amidst the true Immortals,

The amaranth fields with native ease he trod,

Authentic son of the lyre-bearing god.

Fresh portals, untrod pleasaunces, new ways

In Art's great Palace, shrined in Nature's heart,

Sought the young singer, and his limpid lays,

O'er sweet, perchance, yet made the quick blood start

To many a cheek mere glittering; rhymes left cold.

But through the gates of Ivory or of Horn

His vivid vision flocked, and who so bold

As to repulse with scorn

The shining troop because of shadowy birth.

Of bodiless passion, or light tinkling mirth?

But the true god-gift grows. Sweet, sweet, still sweet

As great Apollo's lyre, or Pan's plain reed,

His music flowed, but slowly he out-beat

His song to finer issues. Fingers fleet,

That trifled with the pipe-stops, shook grand sound

From the great organ's golden mouths anon.

A mellow-measured might, a beauty bound

(As Venus with her zone)

By that which shaped from chaos Earth, Air, Sky,

The unhampering restraint of Harmony.

Hysteric ecstasy, new fierce, now faint,

But ever fever-sick, shook not his lyre

With epileptic fervours. Sensual taint

Of satyr heat, or bacchanal desire,

Polluted not the passion of his song;

No corybantic clangor clamoured through

Its manly harmonies, as sane as strong;

So that the captious few

Found sickliness in pure Elysian balm,

And coldness in such high Olympian calm.

Impassioned purity, high minister

Of spirit's joys, was his, reserved, restrained.

His song was like the sword Excalibur

Of his symbolic knight; trenchant, unstained.

It shook the world of wordly baseness, smote

The Christless heathendom of huckstering days.

There is no harshness in that mellow note,

No blot upon those bays;

For loyal love and knightly valour rang

Through rich immortal music when he sang.

ARTHUR, his friend, the Modern Gentleman,

ARTHUR, the