Seven Poems and a Fragment

OLDEST PUPIL.

(motioning the musicians to lower their trumpets)

Not what it leaves behind it in the light

But what it carries with it to the dark

Exalts the soul; nor song nor trumpet-blast

Can call up races from the worsening world

To mend the wrong and mar the solitude

Of the great shade we follow to the tomb.

(Fedelm and the pupils go out carrying the litter. Some play

a mournful music.)

Amid the changeless clamour of the curlew.

And there he can sleep on, not noticing

Although the world be changed from worse to worse,