William Kerr
Reading edition
In Memoriam D. O. M
Chestnut candles are lit again For the dead that died in spring: Dead lovers walk the orchard ways, And the dead cuckoos sing. Is it they who live and we who are dead? Hardly the springtime knows For which today the cuckoo calls, And the white blossom blows. Listen and hear the happy wind Whisper and lightly pass: 'Your love is sweet as hawthorn is, Your hope green as the grass. 'The hawthorn's faint and quickly gone, The grass in autumn dies; Put by your life, and see the spring With everlasting eyes.'
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Past and Present
Daisies are over Nyren, and Hambledon Hardly remembers any summer gone: And never again the Kentish elms shall see Mynn, or Fuller Pilch, or Colin Blythe. — Nor shall I see them, unless perhaps a ghost Watching the elder ghosts beyond the moon. But here in common sunshine I have seen George Hirst, not yet a ghost, substantial, His off-drives mellow as brown ale, and crisp Merry late cuts, and brave Chaucerian pulls; Waddington's fury and the patience of Dipper; And twenty easy artful overs of Rhodes, So many stanzas of the Faerie Queen.
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The Audit
Mere living wears the most of life away: Even the lilies take thought for many things, For frost in April and for drought in May, And from no careless heart the skylark sings. Those cheap utilities of rain and sun Describe the foolish circle of our years, Until death takes us, doing all undone, And there's an end at last to hopes and fears. Though song be hollow and no dreams come true, Still songs and dreams are better than the truth: But there's so much to get, so much to do, Mary must drudge like Martha, dainty Ruth Forget the morning music in the corn, And Rachel grudge when Leah's boys are born.
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The Apple Tree
Secret and wise as nature, like the wind Melancholy or light-hearted without reason, And like the waxing or the waning moon Ever pale and lovely: you are like these Because you are free and live by your own law; While I, desiring life and half alive, Dream, hope, regret and fear and blunder on. Your beauty is your life and my content, And I will liken you to an apple-tree, Mary and Margaret playing under the branches, And everywhere soft shadows like your eyes, And scattered blossom like your little smiles.
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Her New-Year Posy
When I seek the world through For images of you, Though apple-blossom is glad And the lily stately-sad, Gilliflowers kind of breath, Rosemary true till death; Though the wind can stir the grass To memories as you pass. And the soft-singing streams Are music like your dreams; Though constant stars embrace The quiet of your face, Your smile lights up sunrise, And evening's in your eyes — Each so shadows its part, All cannot show your heart; And weighing the beauty of earth I see it so little worth, When reckoned beside you, That I hold heaven for true — But all my heaven is you.
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Counting Sheep
Half-awake I walked A dimly-seen sweet hawthorn lane Until sleep came; I lingered at a gate and talked A little with a lonely lamb. He told me of the great still night, Of calm starlight, And of the lady moon, who'd stoop For a kiss sometimes; Of grass as soft as sleep, of rhymes The tired flowers sang: The ageless April tales Of how, when sheep grew old, As their faith told, They went without a pang To far green fields, where fall Perpetual streams that call To deathless nightingales. And then I saw, hard by, A shepherd lad with shining eyes, And round him gathered one by one Countless sheep, snow-white; More and more they crowded With tender cries, Till all the field was full Of voices and of coming sheep. Countless they came, and I Watched, until deep As dream-fields lie I was asleep.
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The Trees at Night
Under vague silver moonlight The trees are lovely and ghostly, In the pale blue of the night There are few stars to see. The leaves are green still, but brown-blent: They stir not, only known By a poignant delicate scent To the lonely moon blown. The lonely lovely trees sigh For summer spent and gone: A few homing leaves drift by, Poor souls bewildered and wan.
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The Dead
How shall the living be comforted for the dead When they are gone, and nothing's left behind But a vague music of the words they said And a fast-fading image in the mind? Let no forgetting sully that dim grace; Our heart's infirmity is too easily won To set a new love in the old love's place And seek fresh vanity under the sun. Time brings to us at last, as night the stars, The starry silence of eternity: For there is no discharge in our long wars, Nor balm for wounds, nor love's security. Be patient to the end, and you shall sleep Pillowed on heartsease and forget to weep.
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