Poetry A Dagazine of Verse VOL. VIII MAY, 1916 BALDUR LD loves, old griefs, the burthen of old songs That Time, who changes all things, cannot change: Eternal themes! Ah, who shall dare to join The sad procession of the kings of songIrrevocable names, that sucked the dregs Of sorrow from the broken honeycomb Of fellowship?-or brush the tears that hang Bright as ungathered dewdrops on a briar? Death hallows all; but who will bear with me To breathe a more heartrending lamentation, To mourn the memory of a love divided By life, not death, a friend not dead but changed? Not dead-but what is death? Because I hoard Hoarded for ages in a crystal jar By wonder-working gnomes; that only waits His aging sepulchre. And I, even I, Know in my deepest heart that I am not And dies a million times 'twixt breath and breath. Forever and forever and forever Aged with sad hours, to pass to them and meet And wit not that the spirit is yet more frail Than that which holds it. Constant is it in nothing But change; the transmigration of the soul Goes on from hour to hour, it does not wait The dissolution of our frame, but is The law of life, fulfilled in everywise, And we who fear destruction perish ever. The soul-that vaulting speck, that busy flame, By earth and air and all we hear and see Baldur |