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We have built a house that is not for Time's throwing.
We have gained a peace unshaken by pain for ever.

War knows no power. Safe shall be my going,
Secretly armed against all death's endeavour;

Safe though all safety's lost; safe where men fall;
And if these poor limbs die, safest of all.

III. The Dead
Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead!

There's none of these so lonely and poor of old,
But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold.

These laid the world away; poured out the red
Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be

Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene,
That men call age; and those who would have been,

Their sons, they gave, their immortality.
Blow, bugles, blow! They brought us, for our dearth,

Holiness, lacked so long, and Love, and Pain.
Honour has come back, as a king, to earth,

And paid his subjects with a royal wage;
And Nobleness walks in our ways again;

And we have come into our heritage.
IV. The Dead

These hearts were woven of human joys and cares,
Washed marvellously with sorrow, swift to mirth.

The years had given them kindness. Dawn was theirs,
And sunset, and the colours of the earth.

These had seen movement, and heard music; known
Slumber and waking; loved; gone proudly friended;

Felt the quick stir of wonder; sat alone;
Touched flowers and furs and cheeks. All this is ended.

There are waters blown by changing winds to laughter
And lit by the rich skies, all day. And after,

Frost, with a gesture, stays the waves that dance
And wandering loveliness. He leaves a white

Unbroken glory, a gathered radiance,
A width, a shining peace, under the night.

V. The Soldier
If I should die, think only this of me:

That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be

In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,

Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,

Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,

A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;

Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,

In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
The Treasure

When colour goes home into the eyes,
And lights that shine are shut again

With dancing girls and sweet birds' cries
Behind the gateways of the brain;

And that no-place which gave them birth, shall close
The rainbow and the rose: --

Still may Time hold some golden space
Where I'll unpack that scented store

Of song and flower and sky and face,
And count, and touch, and turn them o'er,

Musing upon them; as a mother, who
Has watched her children all the rich day through

Sits, quiet-handed, in the fading light,
When children sleep, ere night.

The South Seas
Tiare Tahiti

Mamua, when our laughter ends,
And hearts and bodies, brown as white,

Are dust about the doors of friends,
Or scent ablowing down the night,

Then, oh! then, the wise agree,
Comes our immortality.

Mamua, there waits a land
Hard for us to understand.

Out of time, beyond the sun,
All are one in Paradise,

You and Pupure are one,
And Tau, and the ungainly wise.

There the Eternals are, and there
The Good, the Lovely, and the True,

And Types, whose earthly copies were
The foolish broken things we knew;

There is the Face, whose ghosts we are;
The real, the never-setting Star;

And the Flower, of which we love
Faint and fading shadows here;

Never a tear, but only Grief;
Dance, but not the limbs that move;

Songs in Song shall disappear;
Instead of lovers, Love shall be;

For hearts, Immutability;
And there, on the Ideal Reef,

Thunders the Everlasting Sea!
And my laughter, and my pain,

Shall home to the Eternal Brain.
And all lovely things, they say,

Meet in Loveliness again;
Miri's laugh, Teipo's feet,

And the hands of Matua,
Stars and sunlight there shall meet,

Coral's hues and rainbows there,
And Teura's braided hair;

And with the starred `tiare's' white,
And white birds in the dark ravine,

And `flamboyants' ablaze at night,
And jewels, and evening's after-green,

And dawns of pearl and gold and red,
Mamua, your lovelier head!

And there'll no more be one who dreams
Under the ferns, of crumbling stuff,

Eyes of illusion, mouth that seems,
All time-entangled human love.

And you'll no longer swing and sway
Divinely down the scented shade,

Where feet to Ambulation fade,
And moons are lost in endless Day.

How shall we wind these wreaths of ours,
Where there are neither heads nor flowers?

Oh, Heaven's Heaven! -- but we'll be missing
The palms, and sunlight, and the south;

And there's an end, I think, of kissing,
When our mouths are one with Mouth. . . .

`Tau here', Mamua,
Crown the hair, and come away!

Hear the calling of the moon,
And the whispering scents that stray

About the idle warm lagoon.
Hasten, hand in human hand,

Down the dark, the flowered way,
Along the whiteness of the sand,

And in the water's soft caress,
Wash the mind of foolishness,

Mamua, until the day.
Spend the glittering moonlight there

Pursuing down the soundless deep
Limbs that gleam and shadowy hair,

Or floating lazy, half-asleep.
Dive and double and follow after,

Snare in flowers, and kiss, and call,
With lips that fade, and human laughter

And faces individual,
Well this side of Paradise! . . .

There's little comfort in the wise.
Papeete, February 1914

Retrospect
In your arms was still delight,

Quiet as a street at night;
And thoughts of you, I do remember,

Were green leaves in a darkened chamber,
Were dark clouds in a moonless sky.

Love, in you, went passing by,
Penetrative, remote, and rare,

Like a bird in the wide air,
And, as the bird, it left no trace

In the heaven of your face.
In your stupidity I found

The sweet hush after a sweet sound.
All about you was the light

That dims the greying end of night;
Desire was the unrisen sun,

Joy the day not yet begun,
With tree whispering to tree,

Without wind, quietly.
Wisdom slept within your hair,

And Long-Suffering was there,
And, in the flowing of your dress,

Undiscerning Tenderness.
And when you thought, it seemed to me,

Infinitely, and like a sea,
About the slight world you had known

Your vast unconsciousness was thrown. . . .
O haven without wave or tide!

Silence, in which all songs have died!
Holy book, where hearts are still!

And home at length under the hill!
O mother quiet, breasts of peace,

Where love itself would faint and cease!
O infinite deep I never knew,

I would come back, come back to you,
Find you, as a pool unstirred,

Kneel down by you, and never a word,
Lay my head, and nothing said,

In your hands, ungarlanded;
And a long watch you would keep;

And I should sleep, and I should sleep!
Mataiea, January 1914

The Great Lover
I have been so great a lover: filled my days

So proudly with the splendour of Love's praise,
The pain, the calm, and the astonishment,

Desire illimitable, and still content,
And all dear names men use, to cheat despair,

For the perplexed and viewless streams that bear
Our hearts at random down the dark of life.

Now, ere the unthinking silence on that strife
Steals down, I would cheat drowsy Death so far,

My night shall be remembered for a star
That outshone all the suns of all men's days.

Shall I not crown them with immortal praise


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