Lyrics (Phillips)

by Stephen Phillips

I

O to recall!
What to recall?
All the roses under snow?
    Not these.
Stars that toward the water go?
    Not these.

O to recall!
What to recall?
All the greenness after rain?
    Not this.
Joy that gleameth after pain?
    Not this.

O to recall!
What to recall?
Not the greenness nor delight,
    Not these;
Not the roses out of sight,
    Not these.

O to recall!
What to recall?
Not the star in waters red,
    Not this:
Laughter of a girl that's dead,
    O this!

II

I in the greyness rose:
I could not sleep for thinking of one dead.
Then to the chest I Avent,
Where lie the things of my beloved spread.

Quietly these I took;
A little glove, a sheet of music torn.
Paintings, ill-done perhaps;
Then lifted up a dress that she had worn.

And now I came to where
Her letters are; they lie beneath the rest;
And read them in the haze;
She spoke of many things, was sore opprest.

But these things moved me not;
Not when she spoke of being parted quite,
Or being misunderstood,
Or growing weary of the world's great fight.

Not even when she wrote
Of our dead child, and the hand-writing swerved;
Not even then I shook:
Not even by such words was I unnerved.

I thought, she is at peace;
Whither the child is gone, she too has passed.
And a much needed rest
Is fallen upon her, she is still at last.

But when at length I took
From under all those letters one small sheet,
Folded and writ in haste;
Why did my heart with sudden sharpness beat?

Alas, it was not sad!
Her saddest words I had read calmly o'er.
Alas, it had no pain!
Her painful words, all these I knew before.

A hurried happy line?
A little jest, too slight for one so dead:
This did I not endure:
Then with a shuddering heart no more I read.

III

O thou art put to many uses, sweet!
Thy blood will urge the rose, and surge in Spring;
But yet! . . .

And all the blue of thee will go to the sky,
And all thy laughter to the rivers run;
But yet! . . .

Thy tumbling hair will in the West be seen,
And all thy trembling bosom in the dawn;
But yet! . . .

Thy briefness in the dewdrop shall be hung,
And all the frailness of thee on the foam;
But yet! . . .

Thy soul shall be upon the moonlight spent,
Thy mystery spread upon the evening mere.
And yet! . . .