War Drums (Scharkie)/To the Memory of F. H. Pearse

by Louis Edward Scharkie

TO THE MEMORY OF F. H. PEARSE. WHO DIED JULY 19, 1896.

Not wintry blasts have seared the leaf;
Nor winter snows, pearling the shroud
With more of gladness than of grief,—
The silver lining of the sunset cloud—
Have wrapt thee in thy winding sheet.
No!—graves have tales more sad and sweet.

Not autumn winds have sighed their strains
Of melody; nor autumn tears,
Dripping alternate joys and pains,
Have mellowed thy young life to riper years.
No! the strung chords had scarcely gushed
Their prelude bursts than snapt, and hushed.

The red rose blooms by hedge and lea,
Vieing its kin in fair repute;
And apple-blossoms, droopingly,
Whiten to paleness on the verge of fruit;
Nor pass the sequent path of spring—
The ripening through the blossoming.

And springs will come, and springs will go,
And winter whiten many a lock.—
Thy springtide ne'er shall pass, nor know
The weight and substance of the ripened shock
Of summer heat, and autumn's wane,
Of gladsome hope, and bitter bane.

Ah! graves have tales so sad and sweet.
We weep, and lie the blossom by;
And mourn the broken, incomplete,
Unfinished rounding of the heart and eye,
Which, scarcely oped to purest day,
Glazed to the storm, and passed away.

Eternal youth be thine. No cloud
To shade; no nipping blasts to sear
The hallowed prospect of the shroud,
And modest virtue of th' untimely tear—
No storms to mar, with darkening strife,
The daybreak of the set of life.