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First Line: I walked with him one melancholy night


I.
I WALKED With him one melancholy night
Down by the sea, along the lonely strands,
While in the dreary heaven the Northern Light
Beckoned with flaming hands


II.
Beckoned and vanished, like a woeful ghost
That fain would lure us to some dismal wood,
And tell us tales of ships that have been lost,
Of violence and blood.


III.
And where yon rock o'erhangs the angry froth,
We sat together as the night went by,
Watching the great star-bear that in the
North Guarded the midnight sky.


IV.
And while the moonlight wrought its miracles,
Drenching the world with silent silver rain,
He spoke of life and its tumultuous ills;
He told me of his pain.


V.
He said his soul was like the troubled sea
With autumn brooding over it: and then
Spoke of his hopes, of what he yearned to be,
And what he might have been.


VI.
'I hope, ' he said, ' I hope for peace at last,
I only ask for peace! My god is Ease!
Day after day some rude Iconoclast
Breaks all my images.


VII.
'There is a better life than I have known
A surer, purer, larger life than this:
There is another, a celestial zone,
Where I shall know of bliss.'


VIII.
So, close his eyes, and cross his helpless hands,
And lay the year's last flowers upon his breast;
For time and death have stayed the golden sands
That ran with such unrest!


IX.
You weep: I smile: I know that he is dead,
So is his passion, and ' tis better so!
Take him, O Earth, and round his lovely head
Let countless roses blow!






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