A Lament
(For Holy Cross Day, 1914)
Clouds is under clouds and rain
For there will not come again
Two, the beloved sire and son
Whom all gifts were rained upon.
Kindness is all done, alas,
Courtesy and grace must pass,
Beauty, wit and charm lie dead,
Love no more may wreathe the head.
Now the branch that waved so high
No wind tosses to the sky;
There's no flowering time to come,
No sweet leafage and no bloom.
Percy, golden-hearted boy,
In the heyday of his joy
Left his new-made bride and chose
The steep way that Honour goes.
Took for his the deathless song
Of the love that knows no wrong:
Could I love thee, dear, so true
Were not Honour more than you?
(Oh, forgive, dear Lovelace, laid
In this mean Procrustean bed!)
Dear, I love thee best of all
When I go, at England's call.
In our magnificent sky aglow
How shall we this Percy know
Where he shines among the suns
And the planets and the moons?
Percy died for England, why,
Here's a sign to know him by!
There's one dear and fixèd star,
There's a youngling never far.
Percy and his father keep
The old loved companionship,
And shine downward in one ray
Where at Clouds they wait for day.
Source: Flower of Youth: Poems in War Time (1915)