Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ON THE DEATH OF ARNOLD TOYNBEE, by JOHN WILLIAM MACKAIL


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ON THE DEATH OF ARNOLD TOYNBEE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Goodbye; no tears nor cries
Last Line: Between the lyre and swan.
Subject(s): Toynbee, Arnold (1852-1883)


GOOD-BYE; no tears nor cries
Are fitting here, and long lament were vain.
Only the last low words be softly said,
And the last greeting given above the dead;
For soul more pure and beautiful our eyes
Never shall see again.

Alas! what help is it,
What consolation in this heavy chance,
That to the blameless life so soon laid low
This was the end appointed long ago,
This the allotted space, the measure fit
Of endless ordinance?

Thus were the ancient days
Made like our own monotonous with grief;
From unassuaged lips even thus hath flown
Perpetually the immemorial moan
Of those that weeping went on desolate ways,
Nor found in tears relief.

For faces yet grow pale,
Tears rise at fortune, and true hearts take fire
In all who hear, with quickening pulse's stroke,
That cry that from the infinite people broke.
When third among them Helen led the wail
At Hector's funeral pyre.

And by the Latin beach
At rise of dawn such piteous tears were shed,
When Troy and Arcady in long array
Followed the princely body on its way,
And Lord Aeneas spoke the last sad speech
Above young Pallas dead

Even in this English clime
The same sweet cry no circling seas can drown,
In melancholy cadence rose to swell
Some dirge of Lycidas or Astrophel
When lovely souls and pure before their time
Into the dusk went down.

These Earth, the bounteous nurse,
Hath long ago lapped in deep peace divine.
Lips that made musical their old-world woe
Themselves have gone to silence long ago,
And left a weaker voice and wearier verse,
O royal soul, for thine.

Beyond our life how far
Soars his new life through radiant orb and zone,
While we in impotency of the night
Walk dumbly, and the path is hard, and light
Fails, and for sun and moon the single star
Honour is left alone.

The star that knows no set,
But circles ever with a fixed desire,
Watching Orion's armour all of gold;
Watching and wearying not, till pale and cold
Dawn breaks, and the first shafts of morning fret
The east with lines of fire.

But on the broad low plain
When night is clear and windy, with hard frost,
Such as had once the morning in their eyes,
Watching and wearying, gaze upon the skies,
And cannot see that star for their great pain
Because the sun is lost.

Alas, how all our love
Is scant at best to fill so ample room!
Image and influence fall too fast away
And fading memory cries at dusk of day
Deem'st thou the dust recks aught at all thereof,
The ghost within the tomb?

For even o'er lives like his
The slumberous river washes soft and slow;
The lapping water rises wearily,
Numbing the nerve and will to sleep; and we
Before the goal and crown of mysteries
Fall back, and dare not know.

Only at times we know,
In gyres convolved and luminous orbits whirled
The soul beyond her knowing seems to sweep
Out of the deep, fire-winged, into the deep;
As two, who loved each other here below
Better than all the world,

Yet ever held apart,
And never knew their own hearts' deepest things,
After long lapse of periods, wandering far
Beyond the pathways of the furthest star,
Into communicable space might dart
With tremor of thunderous wings;

Across the void might call
Each unto each past worlds that raced and ran,
And flash through galaxies, and clasp and kiss
In some slant chasm and infinite abyss
Far in the faint sidereal interval
Between the Lyre and Swan.





Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!


Other Poems of Interest...
Home: PoetryExplorer.net