I sat alone with my conscience,
⁠In a place where time had ceased,
And we talked of my former living
⁠In the land where the years increased.
And I felt I should have to answer
⁠The question it put to me,
And to face the answer and question
⁠Throughout an eternity.
The ghosts of forgotten actions
⁠Come floating before my sight,
And things that I thought were dead things
⁠Were alive with a terrible might.
And the vision of all my past life
⁠Was an awful thing to face, —
Alone with my conscience sitting
⁠In that solemnly silent place.
And I thought of a far-away warning,
⁠Of a sorrow that was to be mine,
In a land that then was the future,
⁠But now is the present time.
And I thought of my former thinking
⁠Of the judgment-day to be,
But sitting alone with my conscience
⁠Seemed judgment enough for me.
And I wondered if there was a future
⁠To this land beyond the grave;
But no one gave me an answer,
⁠And no one came to save.
Then I felt that the future was present,
⁠And the present would never go by,
For it was but the thought of my past life
⁠Grown into eternity.
Then I woke from my timely dreaming,
⁠And the vision passed away,
And I knew the far-away warning
⁠Was a warning of yesterday, —
And I pray that I may not forget it,
⁠In this land before the grave,
That I may not cry in the future,
⁠And no one come to save.
And so I have learnt a lesson
⁠Which I ought to have known before,
And which, though I learnt it dreaming,
⁠I hope to forget no more.
So I sit alone with my conscience
⁠In the place where the years increase,
And I try to remember the future
⁠In the land where time will cease.
And I know of the future judgment,
⁠How dreadful soe'er it be,
That to sit alone with my conscience
⁠Will be judgment enough for me.

Life may give for love to death
⁠Little; what are life's gifts worth
⁠To the dead wrapt round with earth?
Yet from lips of living breath
⁠Sighs or words we are fain to give,
⁠All that yet, while yet we live,
Life may give for love to death.

Dead so long before his day,
⁠Passed out of the Italian sun
⁠To the dark where all is done,
Fallen upon the verge of May,
⁠Here at life's and April's end
⁠How should song salute my friend
Dead so long before his day?

Not a kindlier life or sweeter
⁠Time, that lights and quenches men,
⁠Now may quench or light again,
Mingling with the mystic metre
⁠Woven of all men's lives with his
⁠Not a clearer note than this,
Not a kindlier life or sweeter.

In this heavenliest part of earth
⁠He that living loved the light,
⁠Light and song, may rest aright,
One in death, if strange in birth,
⁠With the deathless dead that make
⁠Life the lovelier for their sake
In this heavenliest part of earth.

Light, and song, and sleep at last —
⁠Struggling hands and suppliant knees
⁠Get no goodlier gift than these.
Song that holds remembrance fast,
⁠Light that lightens death, attend
⁠Round their graves who have to friend
Light, and song, and sleep at last.

The bluest grey — the greyest blue,
⁠Where golden gleaming stars are set;
A moon whose glorious yellow waves
⁠Make fair the rippled rivulet.

Night has her curtain over all;
⁠The firs show dark against the sky:
The only sound is in the song
⁠Of a late nightingale close by.

The wooded walks which seemed so sweet
⁠Seen in the morning's faery light,
Now dim and shadowy hold no charm,
⁠Save the mysterious' charm of night,

One swallow stirs, the gold stars fade,
⁠In the cold sky a chill wind wakes;
The grey clouds frighten out the morn,
⁠And thro' pale mist the new day breaks.

Good morn — good night — which is the best?
⁠God grant some day that I may find
Both true: good morn to joy begun,
⁠Good night to sorrows left behind.