Names Upon a Stone
(Inscribed to G. L. Fagan, Esq.)
Across bleak widths of broken seaA fierce north-easter breaks,And makes a thunder on the lea—A whiteness of the lakes.Here, while beyond the rainy streamThe wild winds sobbing blow,I see the river of my dreamFour wasted years ago.
Narrara of the waterfalls,The darling of the hills,Whose home is under mountain wallsBy many-luted rills!Her bright green nooks and channels coolI never more may see;But, ah! the Past was beautiful—The sights that used to be.
There was a rock-pool in a glenBeyond Narrara’s sands;The mountains shut it in from menIn flowerful fairy lands;But once we found its dwelling-place—The lovely and the lone—And, in a dream, I stooped to traceOur names upon a stone.
Above us, where the star-like mossShone on the wet, green wallThat spanned the straitened stream across,We saw the waterfall—A silver singer far away,By folded hills and hoar;Its voice is in the woods to-day—A voice I hear no more.
I wonder if the leaves that screenThe rock-pool of the pastAre yet as soft and cool and greenAs when we saw them last!I wonder if that tender thing,The moss, has overgrownThe letters by the limpid spring—Our names upon the stone!
Across the face of scenes we knowThere may have come a change—The places seen four years agoPerhaps would now look strange.To you, indeed, they cannot beWhat haply once they were:A friend beloved by you and meNo more will greet us there.
Because I know the filial griefThat shrinks beneath the touch—The noble love whose words are brief—I will not say too much;But often when the night-winds strikeAcross the sighing rills,I think of him whose life was likeThe rock-pool’s in the hills.
A beauty like the light of songIs in my dreams, that showThe grand old man who lived so longAs spotless as the snow.A fitting garland for the deadI cannot compass yet;But many things he did and saidI never will forget.
In dells where once we used to roveThe slow, sad water grieves;And ever comes from glimmering groveThe liturgy of leaves.But time and toil have marked my face,My heart has older grownSince, in the woods, I stooped to traceOur names upon the stone.