Poems (Henley)/In the waste hour

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XLVI MATRI DILECTISSIMÆ I. M.
In the waste hourBetween to-day and yesterdayWe watched, while on my arm—Living flesh of her flesh, bone of her bone—Dabbled in sweat the sacred headLay uncomplaining, still, contemptuous, strange:Till the dear face turned dead,And to a sound of lamentationThe good, heroic soul with all its wealth—Its sixty years of love and sacrifice,Suffering and passionate faith—was reabsorbedIn the inexorable Peace,And life was changed to us for evermore.
Was nothing left of her but tearsLike blood-drops from the heart? ​Nought save remorseFor duty unfulfilled, justice undone,And charity ignored? Nothing but love,Forgiveness, reconcilement, where in truth,But for this passingInto the unimaginable abyssThese things had never been?
Nay, there were we,Her five strong sons!To her Death came—the great Deliverer came!—As equal comes to equal, throne to throne.She was a mother of men.
The stars shine as of old. The unchanging River,Bent on his errand of immortal law,Works his appointed wayTo the immemorial sea.And the brave truth comes overwhelmingly home:—That she in us yet works and shines,Lives and fulfils herself,Unending as the river and the stars.
Dearest, live onIn such an immortality ​As we thy sons,Born of thy body and nursedAt those wild, faithful breasts,Can give—of generous thoughts,And honourable words, and deedsThat make men half in love with fate!Live on, O brave and true,In us thy children, in ours whose life is thine—Our best and theirs! What is that best but thee—Thee, and thy gift to us,to passLike light along the infinite of spaceTo the immitigable end?
Between the river and the stars,O royal and radiant soul,Thou dost return, thine influences returnUpon thy children as in life, and deathTurns stingless! What is DeathBut Life in act? How should the Unteeming GraveBe victor over thee,Mother, a mother of men?
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