none.

And so, pale wanderer, so thou leavest me,
    Passing beyond imagination's range,
Away into the void where waits for thee
    Thy inconceivable destiny of change;
And after all the memories I have striven
To paint, this picture that thyself hast given
    Lives, and I watch, to all those others blind,
Thy form, gliding into eternity,
    Fading, an unconjectured fate to find,
    The last, most wonderful image of the mind.

THE HAPPY NIGHT

I have loved to-night; from love's last bordering steep
I have fallen at last with joy and forgotten the shore;
    I have known my love to-night as never before,
I have flung myself in the deep, and drawn from the deep,
And kissed her lightly, and left my beloved to sleep.
    And now I sit in the night and my heart is still:
    Strong and secure; there is nothing that's left to will,
There is nothing to win but only a thing to keep.

And I look to-night, completed and not afraid,
    Into the windy dark where shines no light;
And care not at all though the darkness never should fade,
    Nor fear that death should suddenly come to-night.
Knowing my last would be surely my bravest breath,
I am happy to-night: I have laughed to-night at death.

CONSTANTINOPLE

"I suddenly realise that the ambition of my life has been—since I was two—to go on a military expedition against Constantinople."—Letter from Rupert Brooke. (Died at Scyros, April 23rd, 1915.)

JUSTINIAN.

Does the church stand I raised
    Against the unchristened East?
Still do my ancient altars bear
    The sacrificial feast?

My jewels are they bright,
    My marbles and my paint,
Wherewith I glorified the Lord
    And many a martyred Saint?

And does my dome still float
    Above the Golden Horn?
And do my priests on Christmas Day
    Still sing that Christ was born?

EUROPE.

Though dust your house, Justinian,
    Still stands your lordliest shrine,
But the dark men who walk therein,
    Know not of bread nor wine.

They fell long since upon your stones,
    And made your colours dim,
Their priests who pray on Christmas Day
    They sing no Christmas hymn.

But a voice at evening goes
    From every climbing tower,
Crying a word you never heard,
    A name of desert power.

CONSTANTINE PALAEOLOGUS.

For seven hundred years
    We gripped a weakening blade,
Keeping the gateway of the West
    With none to give us aid.

Till at the last they broke
    What Constantine had built,
And by the shattered wall the blood
    Of Constantine was spilt.

Do men remember still
    The manner of my death,
How after all those failing years
    I at the last kept faith?

EUROPE.

They know it for a bygone thing
    True but indifferent,
For many a fight has come to pass
    Since to the wall you went.

Westward and northward, Emperor,
    Poured on that bloody brood,
Till those must turn to save themselves
    Who had known not gratitude.

One fought them on the Middle Sea,
    One at Vienna's gate,
And then the kings of Christendom
    Watched the red tide abate.

Till in the end Byzantium
    Heard a returning war;
But still a Mehmet holds your tomb...
    Keep silence ... ask no more.

ELEGY

I vaguely wondered what you were about,
    But never wrote when you had gone away;
Assumed you better, quenched the uneasy doubt
    You might need faces, or have things to say.
    Did I think of you last evening? Dead you lay.
        O bitter words of conscience
        I hold the simple message,
And fierce with grief the awakened heart cries out:
        "It shall not be to-day;

It is still yesterday; there is time yet!"
    Sorrow would strive backward to wrench the sun,
But the sun moves. Our onward course is set,
The wake streams out, the engine pulses run
    Droning, a lonelier voyage is begun.
        It is all too late for turning,
        You are past all mortal signal,
There will be time for nothing but regret
        And the memory of things done!

The quiet voice that always counselled best,
    The mind that so ironically played
Yet for mere gentleness forbore the jest.
    The proud and tender heart that sat in shade
    Nor once solicited another's aid,
        Yet was so grateful always
        For trifles lightly given,
The silences, the melancholy guessed
        Sometimes, when your eyes strayed.

But always when you turned, you talked the more.
    Through all our literature your way you took
With modest ease; yet would you soonest pore,
    Smiling, with most affection in your look,
    On the ripe ancient and the curious nook.
        Sage travellers, learned printers,
        Divines and buried poets,
You knew them all, but never half your lore
        Was drawn from any book.

Stories and jests from field and town and port,
    And odd neglected scraps of history
From everywhere, for you were of the sort,
    Cool and refined, who like rough company:
    Carter and barmaid, hawker and bargee,
        Wise pensioners and boxers
        With whom you drank, and listened
To legends of old revelry and sport
        And customs of the sea.

I hear you: yet more clear than all one note,
    One sudden hail I still remember best,
That came on sunny days from one afloat
    And drew me to the pane in certain quest
    Of a long brown face, bare arms and flimsy vest,
        In fragments through the branches,
        Above the green reflections:
Paused by the willows in your varnished boat
        You, with your oars at rest.

Did that come back to you when you were dying?
    I think it did: you had much leisure there,
And, with the things we knew, came quietly flying
    Memories of things you had seen we knew not where.
    You watched again with meditative stare
        Places where you had wandered,
        Golden and calm in distance:
Voices from all your altering past came sighing
    On the soft Hampshire air.

For there you sat a hundred miles away,
    A rug upon your knees, your hands gone frail,
And daily bade your farewell to the day,
    A music blent of trees and clouds asail
    And figures in some old neglected tale:
        And watched the sunset gathering,
        And heard the birdsong fading,
And went within when the last sleepy lay