Henry Kendall

Other Poems (1871-82). In Memory of Edward Butler

A voice of grave, deep emphasis
 Is in the woods to-night;
No sound of radiant day is this,
 No cadence of the light.
Here in the fall and flights of leaves
 Against grey widths of sea,
The spirit of the forests grieves
 For lost Persephone.

The fair divinity that roves
 Where many waters sing
Doth miss her daughter of the groves—
 The golden-headed Spring.
She cannot find the shining hand
 That once the rose caressed;
There is no blossom on the land,
 No bird in last year's nest.

Here, where this strange Demeter weeps—
 This large, sad life unseen—
Where July's strong, wild torrent leaps
 The wet hill-heads between,
I sit and listen to the grief,
 The high, supreme distress,
Which sobs above the fallen leaf
 Like human tenderness!

Where sighs the sedge and moans the marsh,
 The hermit plover calls;
The voice of straitened streams is harsh
 By windy mountain walls;
There is no gleam upon the hills
 Of last October's wings;
The shining lady of the rills
 Is with forgotten things.

Now where the land's worn face is grey
 And storm is on the wave,
What flower is left to bear away
 To Edward Butler's grave?
What tender rose of song is here
 That I may pluck and send
Across the hills and seas austere
 To my lamented friend?

There is no blossom left at all;
 But this white winter leaf,
Whose glad green life is past recall,
 Is token of my grief.
Where love is tending growths of grace,
 The first-born of the Spring,
Perhaps there may be found a place
 For my pale offering.

For this heroic Irish heart
 We miss so much to-day,
Whose life was of our lives a part,
 What words have I to say?
Because I know the noble woe
 That shrinks beneath the touch—
The pain of brothers stricken low—
 I will not say too much.

But often in the lonely space
 When night is on the land,
I dream of a departed face—
 A gracious, vanished hand.
And when the solemn waters roll
 Against the outer steep,
I see a great, benignant soul
 Beside me in my sleep.

Yea, while the frost is on the ways
 With barren banks austere,
The friend I knew in other days
 Is often very near.
I do not hear a single tone;
 But where this brother gleams,
The elders of the seasons flown
 Are with me in my dreams.

The saintly face of Stenhouse turns—
 His kind old eyes I see;
And Pell and Ridley from their urns
 Arise and look at me.
By Butler's side the lights reveal
 The father of his fold,
I start from sleep in tears, and feel
 That I am growing old.

Where Edward Butler sleeps, the wave
 Is hardly ever heard;
But now the leaves above his grave
 By August's songs are stirred.
The slope beyond is green and still,
 And in my dreams I dream
The hill is like an Irish hill
 Beside an Irish stream.