The Secret Splendour

The Dead*

I

"No more shall thy hearth show thee welcoming fire,

Nor perfect wife nor children crave thy kiss

And touch thy wandered soul with quiet bliss;

No longer shall thy life bear faultless bloom

Of loving labour and brave constancy:

O miserable heart of man for whom

One fatal day despoiled all sweetnesses!"

But they speak not: "Now never keen desire

For vanished rapture can come over thee."

II

Nor pity us, the living dead who roam

The Spirit's snowy grandeur, far from home

And human joy. Know you the ecstasy,

The loveliness, the immortality

Concealed from us till like an infinite flower

Awoke a shining silence in our heart?

We are heaven-haunted wanderers apart

For whom earth's lures have ceased since that strange hour.

Speak over our graves within you: "Never breath

Of sorrowful longing mars their passion-death."

20.6.32

* The first stanza is a free translation of some lines of Lucretius:

 Iam iam non domus accipiet te laeta, neque uxor

 Optima nec dulces occurrent oscula nati

Praeripere et tacita pectus lulcedine tangent;

Non petris factis florentibu i esse, tuisque

Prasidium: misere misere amnt omnia ademit

Una dies infesta tibi tot praemia vitae.

 Illud in his rebus non addunt, Nec tibi earum

 I am desiderium rerum supi r insidet una.

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