The Day that
Youth
had died,
There came to his grave-side,
In decent mourning, from the country’s ends,
Those scatter’d friends
Who had lived the boon companions of his prime,
And laughed with him and sung with him and wasted,
In feast and wine and many-crown’d carouse,
The days and nights and dawnings of the time
When
Youth
kept open house,
Nor left untasted
Aught of his high emprise and ventures dear,
No quest of his unshar’d—
All these, with loitering feet and sad head bar’d,
Followed their old friend’s bier.
Folly
went first,
With muffled bells and coxcomb still revers’d;
And after trod the bearers, hat in hand—
Laughter,
most hoarse, and Captain
Pride
with tanned
And martial face all grim, and fussy
Joy
Who had to catch a train, and
Lust,
poor, snivelling boy;
These bore the dear departed.
Behind them, broken-hearted,
Came
Grief,
so noisy a widow, that all said,
“Had he but wed
Her elder sister
Sorrow,
in her stead!”
And by her, trying to soothe her all the time,
The fatherless children,
Colour, Tune,
and
Rhyme
(The sweet lad
Rhyme
), ran all-uncomprehending.
Then, at the way’s sad ending,
Round the raw grave they stay’d. Old
Wisdom
read,
In mumbling tone, the Service for the Dead.
There stood
Romance,
The furrowing tears had mark’d her rougèd cheek;
Poor old
Conceit,
his wonder unassuaged;
Dead
Innocency’s
daughter,
Ignorance;
And shabby, ill-dress’d
Generosity;
And
Argument,
too full of woe to speak;
Passion,
grown portly, something middle-aged;
And
Friendship
—not a minute older, she;
Impatience,
ever taking out his watch;
Faith,
who was deaf, and had to lean, to catch
Old
Wisdom’s
endless drone.
Beauty
was there,
Pale in her black; dry-eyed; she stood alone.
Poor maz’d Imagination;
Fancy
wild;
Ardour,
the sunlight on his greying hair;
Contentment,
who had known
Youth
as a child
And never seen him since. And
Spring
came too,
Dancing over the tombs, and brought him flowers—
She did not stay for long.
And
Truth,
and
Grace,
and all the merry crew,
The laughing
Winds
and
Rivers,
and lithe
Hours;
And
Hope,
the dewy-eyed; and sorrowing
Song;
—
Yes, with much woe and mourning general,
At dead
Youth’s
funeral,
Even these were met once more together, all,
Who erst the fair and living
Youth
did know;
All, except only
Love. Love
had died long ago.