Here death may deal not again forever;

Here change may come not till all change end. From the graves they have made they shall rise up never, Who have left naught living to ravage and rend. Earth, stones, and thorns of the wild ground growing, While the sun and the rain live, these shall be; Till a last wind's breath upon all these blowing Roll the sea.

Till the slow sea rise and the sheer cliff crumble,
Till terrace and meadow the deep gulfs drink,
Till the strength of the waves of the high tides humble
The fields that lessen, the rocks that shrink;
Here now in his triumph where all things falter,
Stretched out on the spoils that his own hand spread,
As a god self-slain on his own strange altar,

Death lies dead.

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909)

The Napoleonic wars, like all great struggles, left an impress on literature. The great world novels, Vanity Fair and Les Misérables, have their Waterloo episodes. Among the most quoted parts of Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage are the Waterloo stanzas. Wordsworth and Coleridge each vibrated like a harp to certain phases of the contemporary world struggle. Perhaps the best known short poem inspired by this war was written by Charles Wolfe, a man famous for nothing else. "The Burial of Sir John Moore at Corunna" combines soldierly dignity with simplicity. Its keynote is the same as that of Rupert Brooke's great sonnet, "The Soldier."

THE BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE
AT CORUNNA

Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,

As his corpse to the rampart we hurried; Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot O'er the grave where our hero we buried.

We buried him darkly at dead of night,
The sods with our bayonets turning;
By the struggling moonbeam's misty light
And the lantern dimly burning.

No useless coffin enclosed his breast,

Not in sheet or in shroud we wound him; But he lay like a Warrior taking his rest, With his martial cloak around him.

Few and short were the prayers we said,
And we spoke not a word of sorrow;
But we steadfastly gaz'd on the face that was dead,
And we bitterly thought of the morrow.

We thought, as we hollow'd his narrow bed
And smoothed down his lonely pillow,

That the Foe and the Stranger would tread o'er his head,

And we far away on the billow!

Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone
And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him,-
But little he'll reck, if they let him sleep on
In the grave where a Briton has laid him.

But half of our heavy task was done

When the clock struck the hour for retiring:
And we heard the distant and random gun
That the foe was sullenly firing.

Slowly and sadly we laid him down,

From the field of his fame fresh and gory;
We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone-
But we left him alone with his glory.

Charles Wolfe (1791-1823)

The anapests in "Prospice" assist in conveying the note of anticipated triumph. Mrs. Browning had been dead but a few months when the poem was written. When her husband, late in life, penned his swan-song, the "Epilogue" to Asolando, his view had not changed. Browning, the poet for those growing old, vigorously opposes Byron's thesis that

The days of our youth are the days of our glory.

For a virile philosophical poem glorifying the latter part of life, see "Rabbi Ben Ezra." Prospice means look forward.

PROSPICE

Fear death?-to feel the fog in my throat,

The mist in my face,

When the snows begin, and the blasts denote
I am nearing the place,

The power of the night, the press of the storm,
The post of the foe;

Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form,

Yet the strong man must go:

For the journey is done and the summit attained,
And the barriers fall,

Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be gained,
The reward of it all.

I was ever a fighter, so-one fight more,

The best and the last!

I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forebore,
And bade me creep past.

No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers
The heroes of old,

Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears
Of pain, darkness, and cold.

For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave,
The black minute's at end,

And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave,
Shall dwindle, shall blend,

Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain,
Then a light, then thy breast,

O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again,
And with God be the rest!

Robert Browning (1812-1889)

"Prospice" and "Coronach" afford a striking contrast in thought. Scott, in this song from The Lady of the Lake, is not, however, giving his own views of death. The work of a narrative poet may be nearly if not wholly impersonal. The lyric poet may, on the other hand, be considered to hold the views he expresses in a subjective work. That he may sometimes portray opposite moods is, nevertheless, forcefully illustrated by the titles of two of Tennyson's poems, "Nothing Will Die" and "All Things Will Die." The word coronach, Gaelic in origin, means a song of lamentation; correi is Scottish for a hollow in the side of a hill; cumber, distress or difficulty.

CORONACH

He is gone on the mountain,
He is lost to the forest,
Like a summer-dried fountain,

When our need was the sorest.
The font, reappearing,

From the rain-drops shall borrow,

But to us comes no cheering,

To Duncan no morrow!

The hand of the reaper

Takes the ears that are hoary,

But the voice of the weeper
Wails manhood in glory.
The autumn winds rushing

Waft the leaves that are searest,

But our flower was in flushing
When blighting was nearest.

Fleet foot on the correi,
Sage counsel in cumber,
Red hand in the foray,

How sound is thy slumber!
Like the dew on the mountain,
Like the foam on the river,
Like the bubble on the fountain,

Thou art gone, and forever!

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1823)

The next two poems, one very short and one rather long, are both anapestic. While Shelley's "The Cloud" is a complete poem, "The Year's at the Spring" is only a part, the famous song of the girl from the silk-mills in Browning's drama, Pippa Passes.