Lion lay still while the cold tides of death
Came brimming up his channels. With one hand
He groped to know if Michael still drew breath.
His little hour was running out its sand.
Then, in a mist, he saw his Mary stand
Above. He cried aloud, “He was my brother.
I was his comrade sworn, and we have killed each other.”
“Oh desolate grief, beloved, and through me.
We wise who try to change. Oh, you wild birds,
Help my unhappy spirit to the sea.
The golden bowl is scattered into sherds.”
And Mary knelt and murmured passionate words
To that poor body on the dabbled flowers:
“Oh, beauty, oh, sweet soul, oh, little love of ours—”
“Michael, my own heart’s darling, speak; it’s me,
Mary. You know my voice. I’m here, dear, here.
Oh, little golden-haired one, listen. See,
It’s Mary, Michael. Speak to Mary, dear.
Oh, Michael, little love, he cannot hear;
And you have killed him, Lion; he is dead.
My little friend, my love, my Michael, golden head.”
“We had such fun together, such sweet fun,
My love and I, my merry love and I.
Oh, love, you shone upon me like the sun.
Oh, Michael, say some little last good-bye.”
Then in a calm voice Lion called, “I die.
Go home and tell my people. Mary. Hear.
Though I have wrought this ruin, I have loved you, dear.”
“Better than he; not better, dear, as well.
If you could kiss me, dearest, at this last.
We have made bloody doorways from our hell,
Cutting our tangle. Now, the murder past,
We are but pitiful poor souls; and fast
The darkness and the cold come. Kiss me, sweet;
I loved you all my life; but some lives never meet”
“Though they go wandering side by side through Time.
Kiss me,” he cried. She bent, she kissed his brow.
“Oh, friend,” she said, “you’re lying in the slime.”
“Three blind ones, dear,” he murmured, “in the slough,
Caught fast for death; but never mind that now;
Go home and tell my people. I am dying,
Dying dear, dying now.” He died; she left him lying,
And kissed her dead one’s head and crossed the field.
“They have been killed,” she called, in a great crying.
“Killed, and our spirits’ eyes are all unsealed
The blood is scattered on the flowers drying.”
It was the hush of dusk, and owls were flying;
They hooted as the Occleves ran to bring
That sorry harvest home from Death’s red harvesting.
They laid the bodies on the bed together.
And “You were beautiful,” she said, “and you
Were my own darling in the April weather.
You knew my very soul, you knew, you knew.
Oh, my sweet, piteous love, I was not true.
Fetch me fair water and the flowers of spring;
My love is dead, and I must deck his burying.”
They left her with her dead; they could not choose
But grant the spirit burning in her face
Rights that their pity urged them to refuse.
They did her sorrow and the dead a grace.
All night they heard her passing footsteps trace
About the flooring in the room of death.
They heard her singing there, lowly, with gentle breath,
Yet when the darkness passed they tried the door,
And burst it, fearing; there the singer lay
Drooped at her lover’s bedside on the floor,
Singing her passionate last of life away.
White flowers had fallen from a blackthorn spray
Over her loosened hair. Pale flowers of spring
Filled the white room of death; they everything.
Primroses, daffodils, and cuckoo-flowers.
She bowed her singing head on Michael’s breast.
“Oh, it was sweet,” she cried, “that love of ours.
You were the dearest, sweet; I loved you best.
Beloved, my beloved, let me rest
By you forever, little Michael mine.
Now the great hour is stricken, and the bread and wine”
“Broken and spilt; and now the homing birds
Draw to a covert, Michael; I to you.
Bury us two together,” came her words.
The dropping petals fell about the two.
Her heart had broken; she was dead. They drew
Her gentle head aside; they found it pressed
Against the broidered ’kerchief spread on Michael’s breast,
The one that bore her name in Michael’s hair,
Given so long before. They let her lie
While the dim moon died out upon the air,
And happy sunlight coloured all the sky.
The lack cock crowed for morning; carts went by;
Smoke rose from cottage chimneys; from the byre
The yokes went clanking by, to dairy, through the mire.
In the day’s noise the water’s noise was stilled,
But still it slipped along, the cold hill-spring,
Dropping from leafy hollows, which it filled,
On to the pebbly shelves which made it sing;
Glints glittered on it from the ’fisher’s wing;
It saw the moorhen nesting; then it stayed
In a great space of reeds where merry otters played.
Slowly it loitered past the shivering reeds
Into a mightier water; thence its course
Becomes a pasture where the salmon feeds,
Wherein no bubble tells its humble source;
But the great waves go rolling, and the horse
Snorts at the bursting waves and will not drink,
And the great ships go outward, bubbling to the brink,
Outward, with men upon them, stretched in line,
Handling the halliards to the ocean’s gates,
Where flicking windflaws fill the air with brine,
And all the ocean opens. Then the mates
Cry, and the sunburnt crew no longer waits,
But sings triumphant and the topsail fills
To this old tale of woe among the daffodils.