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Wilfrid Scawen Blunt - To A Happy Warrior
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Glory to God who made a man like this!
 To God be praise who in the empty heaven
 Set Earth`s gay globe
 With its green vesture given
 And nuptial robe
 To be the home enthroned of happiness!
 Who from the silences
 Of the dumb Universe,
 For listening ears,
 Constructed song
 And fashioned the first note
 Of the first linnet`s throat,
 His audible whisper the deep woods among!
 Who, with His dance--masters,
 The dappled deer
 And their fleet fawns,
 With rhythmic beat
 Of their light feet
 Upon the thyme--sweet lawns,
 Framed the free gamut of the wakening year
 And gave command to mirth His minister
 That all things young and glad
 And mad,
 In this fair world`s expanse
 Should dance!
 Praise be! and most for these,
 The lyric ecstasies
 Sublime in each least lot,
 The passionate plot
 Subtly contrived to propagate their kind
 By beast and bird and in Man`s livelier mind
 To make of life new life,
 Of joy new joy, in corporal bliss
 Entwined,
 Man`s who is man and wife,
 Though neither he have thought
 Nor she, in their love blind,
 Of that child`s smile
 Half hers half his
 Unborn, the while
 They clasp and kiss!
 These are the vastnesses
 That bid us give God glory for his depths of guile.

 And he? The ultimate man,
 The heir of their delight,
 Whose keener sight
 Grasped the full vision of Time`s master--plan,
 And who, because he knew,
 Found power to do
 What the rest dared not and was thus the priest
 Of the divine high feast
 Of Love on Earth? Poet, whose prosody
 Embraced heaven`s infinite blue
 And the white light of stars,
 The moon`s proud chastity
 And the sea beating on its prison bars;
 Whose ritual
 Was the procession of the months and days
 In ordered praise
 Of ceremonial flowers, Earth`s virginal
 Patchwork of shredded colours in the grass;
 Whose incense was
 The mist of morning, and whose sacrifice
 The sun in splendour by whose light all live?
 How shall we give
 To one thus wise
 Our homage who so loved him and alas
 Now weep for him with unavailing eyes?

 For what is wisdom more than this one thought,
 To harvest happiness? Time has its wheat,
 Its rule of life discreet,
 By scholars taught,
 For daily bread; and its weeds too,
 Its wild crop of the woods which is not bought,
 Its way that fools call folly,
 Choke--pear, crab, holly,
 All the riot
 Of the bird`s diet,
 For maid and boy,
 Their winter--pick of joy,
 If they but knew!
 And these to learn and gather in their prime
 Is youth`s sublime.

 Here lay his victory. Not flowers alone
 Nor fruits were his,
 But the world`s sadnesses
 He gathered also, its loves lost and gone,
 The tragic things that are
 As the maple leaves
 Of the fast dying year,
 Crowning its funeral car,
 The glory of its passing set on fire
 In the late hedges,
 The wreathed bryony
 Black with the Autumn saltings of the Sea,
 And those lone sedges at the lake`s edges
 Which winter winds have whitened on the mere.
 These, as the symbols of his Soul`s romance
 In antique lands,
 He bound into the sheaves
 Of his desire,
 A wreath,
 Nobler for death.
 Of these he fashioned a new chivalry
 For days to be,
 Incorporate with the glories of all Time,
 The immortal rhyme
 Of Roland and the paladins of France,
 Of Charlemagne,
 The Cid Bivar of Spain,
 And those pround questers of the Holy Grail
 Who rode with Arthur cap à pie in mail,
 Till in his hands
 It seemed the actual lance
 Of Lancelot trembled and took edge and shook
 Defiance at his foes in Lyonnesse,
 No less than those
 Of whom it is written in the old French book
 That he pursued and slew and scattering rent
 Their ranks in fear,
 While the Earth trembled his glad shout to hear.
 So he in his high rage in Parliament.

 Anon, too, at the feasts
 Where with the knights and ladies crowned he sat,
 Their laureate
 Of that famed Table Round, its pleasure`s lord,
 His was the tongue
 To celebrate their praise,
 Theirs the adored,
 With virile minstrelsy and mirth and song,
 And generous wine
 Outpoured
 In draughts divine from flagons
 Rich with the mellow fruitage of the vine;
 His was the tongue
 To tell of valorous deeds
 Done for high honour`s needs
 On pestilent dragons in dank forest places
 Vanquished and slain, and felon knights laid low,
 For fair loved faces
 In days long ago;
 Amorous sad tales of dolorous mistakes
 At hands that sought to save;
 Ancient heart--aches,
 Each laid to rest in its forgotten grave.
 And with them griefs, which venturing found their hour,
 Fruitage and flower,
 And were fulfilled of joy;--and chiefly hers,
 Royal sad Guinevere`s
 Noblest of all among the tragic dead.
 Of her he loved to tell.
 And he did well;
 For she, the lady of his dreams, one night,
 As it is said,
 In Glastonbury,
 Hearing his young steps hurry
 As to a goal,
 To kneel at her dead feet,
 Where as she lay with her sleep--folded palms
 In the long calms
 Of a passed soul,
 Did from her cerements white
 Awake,
 And feel her passionate heart beat
 To his desire,
 And in new bride`s attire
 Arise and live a woman for his sake,
 A woman and no dream.
 These were the rhapsodies of life to him,
 The things that his heart`s zeal
 Made real.

 And who shall wonder if to--day we weep
 Our Prince of happiness,
 Our warrior dead?
 If we, who saw
 These wonders beyond law,
 And his proud soul`s essay
 To live the great life of the Fellowship
 In our late day,
 Should mourn him fled,
 Yet, none the less,
 Give praise
 To God, with chastened but undoubting lip,
 For this exemplar of His works and ways?
 Since that we know that in His scheme of bliss
 No permanent anguish is,
 But beauty only and high ruth and truth,
 And that Life`s law is this:
 Pleasure is duty, duty pleasure
 In equal measure;
 And Time`s happiness
 God`s all--sufficient reason with the wise,
 As with this man
 Who sleeps in Paradise.
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