Did you play here child The whole spring through And smiled and smiled And never knew?-- Where the shade is cool And the grass grows deep, One that was beautiful Lies in his sleep.
Ah no child, never Will he arise, The sleep was for ever That closed his eyes. And his bed is strewn Deep underground, He was tired so soon, And now sleeps sound.
When the first birds sing We can hear them, dear, And in early spring There are snowdrops here. For the flowers love him That lies below, And ever above him The daisies grow.
"Shall we look down deep Where he hides away? Shall we find him asleep?" Yes child, some day. But his palace gate Is so hard to see, We two must wait For the angel's key.
The low plains stretch to the west with a glimmer of rustling weeds, Where the waves of a golden river wind home by the marshy meads; And the strong wind born of the sea grows faint with a sickly breath, As it stays in the fretting rushes and blows on the dews of death. We came to the silent city, in the glare of the noontide heat, When the sound of a whisper rang through the length of the lonely street; No tree in the clefted ruin, no echo of song nor sound, But the dust of a world forgotten lay under the barren ground. There are shrines under these green hillocks to the beautiful gods that sleep, Where they prayed in the stormy season for lives gone out on the deep; And here in the grave street sculptured, old record of loves and tears, By the dust of the nameless slave, forgotten a thousand years. Not ever again at even shall ship sail in on the breeze, Where the hulls of their gilded galleys came home from a hundred seas, For the marsh plants grow in her haven, the marsh birds breed in her bay, And a mile to the shoreless westward the water has passed away. But the sea-folk gathering rushes come up from the windy shore, So the song that the years have silenced grows musical there once more; And now and again unburied, like some still voice from the dead, They light on the fallen shoulder and the lines of a marble head. But we went from the sorrowful city and wandered away at will, And thought of the breathing marble and the words that are music still. How full were their lives that laboured, in their fetterless strength and far From the ways that our feet have chosen as the sunlight is from the star, They clung to the chance and promise that once while the years are free Look over our life's horizon as the sun looks over the sea, But we wait for a day that dawns not, and cry for unclouded skies, And while we are deep in dreaming the light that was o'er us dies; We know not what of the present we shall stretch out our hand to save Who sing of the life we long for, and not of the life we have; And yet if the chance were with us to gather the days misspent, Should we change the old resting-places, the wandering ways we went? They were strong, but the years are stronger; they are grown but a name that thrills, And the wreck of their marble glory lies ghost-like over their hills. So a shadow fell o'er our dreaming for the weary heart of the past, For the seed that the years have scattered, to reap so little at last.