Poem by Philip Bourke Marston

In Memory of Arthur O’Shaughnessy

                    Died January 30, 1881

	That day returns which took thee from our sight
And did forever hush that voice of thine.
Thine eyes beheld, through thy youth’s fair sunshine,
	And not so far away, the end of light;
And not from far thy young ears heard Death say, –
“It shall be good to rest with me some day!”

	Singer and seer, who, ere the end of all,
Didst turn thy back on death, and look past birth
To where, in terror of the life on earth
	And all the griefs to which it should be thrall,
Thine unborn soul did in sublime despair
Assail “En Soph” in unavailing prayer!

	This year that bears us on to storm – or what? –
Has no acquaintanceship with thee, O brother,
Gone home, now, to the earth, our common mother.
	Men come and go; things are remembered not:
But I shall think of thee, O parted friend,
Till, even as thou, I reach the journey’s end.

	First come of us, to leave the first thou wert, –
To fall from out the ranks of us who sang.
How clear along the ranks thy full note rang
	With individual sweetness, lyric art;
Thou who hadst felt John’s spiritual stress,
What time he tarried in the wilderness.

	May not thy soul in song embodied be,
As patriots dead, who once strove here with wrong,
Bequeath their souls to make new patriots strong?
	May not all spirits in their own degree
Be unseen sources, feeding evermore
The causes which on earth they labored for?

	Thy day of death was Landor’s day of birth;
And, while all hearts that revel in his might,
Rejoicing in that soul’s immaculate light
	Which was so long as sunlight on our earth,
Give thanks, I will keep mute upon this day
On which thy singing spirit passed away.

	Often when in my room I brood alone
With weary heart, bowed down to death almost,
Hearing waves break upon an unknown coast
	Where be great wrecks of ships that were mine own,
With all their freights of precious merchandise
That comes alone from ports of Paradise,

	I seem to hear a step, a voice I know;
Almost I feel a hand; and then my heart
Thrills and leaps in me with a sudden start,
	Then sinks again, because this is not so.
Here, where thy feet so many times passed o’er,
Again thy footstep shall fall nevermore.

	When through these outer and unpitying ways,
With all their loud and lacerating noises,
Thunder of wheels, and jar of unknown voices,
	I walk alone, I think of those past days
When arm-in-arm we walked the same way through,
Talking and laughing as good comrades do.

	Thou wert so full of song and strength and life,
Hadst such keen pleasure in small things and great,
It hardly can seem real to know thy state
	Is with the ancient dead, where jars no strife,
Where very surely I shall come some day,
Hands torn, and feet left bleeding from the way.

	Take thou this song, as yet another wreath
To those we dropped into thy resting-place,
Each bending low, with eager, hungering gaze,
	Knowing it was thy dust that lay beneath;
Knowing thy fair, fleet, singing life was done,
Thy light extinguished, and thy bay-wreath won.

1. Roses and the Nightingale
2. After Summer
3. A Castle in Spain
4. The Two Burdens

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