The Flute Player And Other Poems

tion. Half adown The sloping hillside, walled from careless feet And all the mild mutations of the field, Stands in its sanctity a little plot Set off forever to the silent dead,? The beautiful, wise dead,?and here in peace Sleep generations dreaming of the sun,? The footsore travellers of the island town Who rest and wait the morrow. Faring once Across the headland, down the hillside, I Came to this warm God's acre, and drew near, Reading, as one who cons remembered lore, The brief memorials cut in cumbering stone, The names of men revered and women loved, Of children broken even as unoped buds From stems that never healed them of the hurt, Of kindred honored and friends gone before. The headstones stood like sculptured sentinels Anticipant in posture. One there was, Partly in shadow of the loving grass, Which drew my gaze by its elusive spell And struck me into wonder. Over half The legend-bearing stone the moss had grown, Weaving a green, impenetrable veil, And lichen, closer clinging than doth cling Love's lips to lips that falter a farewell, Covered it deeper into mystery. So stood the tablet, bearing to the light One half a history, while the shrouding bloom Of reticent nature blotted out the rest. I read a name, Honoria. To the right A fair sunlit inscription. To the left Naught but the masking greenery. So I came And knelt before the cryptic stone, and bent The sunburnt grasse...