The Rainbow and the Rose

God save the King!

* * * * * * * * *

The Queen is dead. God save the King.
This is no hour when joy has leave to sing;
Only, amid our tears, we are bold to pray,
More boldly, in that we pray sorrowing,
In this most sorrowful day.
God, who wast of a mortal Mother born,
Who driest the tears with which Thy children mourn,
God, save the King!

Look down on him whose crown is wet with tears
In which its splendour fades and disappears—
His tears, our tears, tears out of all her lands.
The Queen is dead.
God! strengthen the King's hands!
God, save the King!

TRUE LOVE AND NEW LOVE

OVER the meadow and down the lane
To the gate by the twisted thorn:
Your feet should know each turn of the way
You trod so many many a day,
Before the old love was put out of its pain,
Before the new love was born.

Kiss her, hold her and fold her close,
Tell her the old true tale:
You ought to know each turn of the phrase,—
You learned them all in the poor old days
Before the birth of the new red rose,
Before the old rose grew pale.

And do not fear I shall creep to-night
To make a third at your tryst:
My ghost, if it walked, would only wait
To scare the others away from the gate
Where you teach your new love the old delight,
With the lips that your old love kissed.

DEATH

NEVER again:
No child shall stir the inmost heart of her
And teach her heaven by that first faint stir;
No little lips shall lie against her breast
Save the cold lips that now lie there at rest;
No little voice shall rouse her from her sleep
And bid her wake to pain:
Her sleep is calm and deep,
Call not! refrain.

Close in her arm
As though even death drew back before the face
Of Motherhood in this white stilly place,
The gathered bud lies waxen white and cold,
As ever a flower your winter gardens hold.
She bore the pain, she never wore the crown,
She worked the bitter charm,
But all she won thereby is here laid down
Renounced—for good or harm.

Dream? Feed your soul
With dreams, while we must starve our hearts on clay,
Dream of a glorious white-winged sun-crowned day
When you shall see her once more face to face
Beside Christ's Mother in the blessed place!
But while you dream, they carry her from here,
The black bells toll and toll.
Oh God! if only she cannot see or hear,
Not hear those ghoul-like bells that crowd so near,
Not see that cold clay hole.

IN MEMORY OF SARETTA DEAKIN

Who Died on October 25th, 1899.

THERE was a day,
A horrible Autumn day,
When from her home, the home she made for ours
And that day made a nightmare of white flowers
And folk in black who whispered pityingly,
They carried her away;
And left our hearts all cold
And empty, yet with such a store to hold
Of sodden grief the slow drops still ooze out,
And, falling on all fair things, they wither these.
Tears came with time—but not with time went by.

And still we wander desolate about
The poor changed house, the garden and the croft,
Warm kitchen, sunny parlour, with the soft
Intolerable pervading memories
Of her whose face and voice made melodies,
Sweet unforgotten songs of mother-love—
Dear songs of all the little joys that were.
We see the sun, and have no joy thereof,