Thy soul was borne from life that knows not ease,
Thy body tossed upon the billowy seas
Mid brackishness and moan,
Rest, Premier, rest.
Sleep, loved one, sleep:
Our cheeks with waiting burned,
Through calm, cold nights, and frore midwinter days:
No heart but day and night to theeward turned,
No eye but seaward did expectant gaze;
No friend but for his leal true comrade yearned.
Thy faults though seen, what could they but endear
Thee to us all?—and now thou canst not hear
Our sorrow or our praise;
Sleep, loved one, sleep.
Peace, War-king, peace:
Triumphant in the fight,
In midst of victory thou hast found thine end;
Old errors vanquished, lo! the cause of right
Has found thee life-long champion, life-long friend.
The nation thou hast welded moves in might,
And as thyself was known o’er sea and land,
May it in van of nations purely stand;
And now—God us defend.
Peace, War-king, peace.[1]
Out of the West, sound sleeping,
Heedless now of the change of dawn and sunset,
Dreaming deep of the olden clamour and onset,
Wrapt in peace and swayed in the passionate swell
Of hurrying waves high leaping
To foam farewell.
Home to the hills that mourn him!
With silence set on the lips that laughed and lightened,
Darkness set in the clear grey eyes that brightened
When once he swept the strings of the songful days.
High, high, pale Death has borne him
By far, dim ways.
Vain now the trumpets’ blaring,
The bright, blithe cheers and shouts of the hearts that love him
Wishful only of peace and the grass above him,
Out of the dark strange sea he is seeking rest.
Ended his strong wayfaring—
Closed his long quest.
- ↑ From the “Lyttelton Times”
