Francis William Lauderdale Adams

Something

It is something in this darker dream demented
 to have wrestled with its pleasure and its pain:
it is something to have sinned, and have repented:
 it is something to have failed, and tried again!

It is something to have loved the brightest Beauty
 with no hope of aught but silence for your vow:
it is something to have tried to do your duty:
 it is something to be trying, trying now!

And, in the silent solemn hours,
 when your soul floats down the far faint flood of time —
to think of Earth's lovers who are ours,
 of her saviours saving, suffering, sublime:

And that you with THESE may be her lover,
 with THESE may save and suffer for her sake —
IT IS JOY TO HAVE LIVED, SO TO DISCOVER
 YOU'VE A LIFE YOU CAN GIVE AND SHE CAN TAKE!

Gordon's Grave

All the heat and the glow and the hush
 of the summer afternoon;
the scent of the sweet-briar bush
 over bowing grass-blades and broom;

the birds that flit and pass;
 singing the song he knows,
the grass-hopper in the grass;
 the voice of the she-oak boughs.

Ah, and the shattered column
 crowned with the poet's wreath.
Who, who keeps silent and solemn
 his passing place beneath?

~This was a poet that loved God's breath;
 his life was a passionate quest;
he looked down deep in the wells of death,
 and now he is taking his rest.~

To A. L. Gordon

In night-long days, in aeons where all Time's nights are one; where life and death sing paeans as of Greeks and Galileans, never begun or done;

where fate, the slow swooping condor, comes glooming all the sky — as you have pondered I ponder, as you have wandered I wander, as you have died, shall I die?

Love and Death

Death? is it death you give? So be it! O Death, thou hast been long my friend, and now thy pale cool cheek shall have my kiss, while the faint breath expires on thy still lips, O lovely Death!

Come then, loose hands, fair Life, without a wail! We've had good hours together, and you were sweet what time love whispered with the nightingale, tho' ever your music by the lark's would fail.

Come then, loose hands! Our lover time is done.
Now is the marriage with the eternal sun.
 The hours are few that rest, are few and fleet.
Good-bye! The game is lost: the game is won.