



Produced by Al Haines.


                                FRIENDS


                                   BY
                         WILFRID WILSON GIBSON



                                 LONDON
                       ELKIN MATHEWS, CORK STREET
                                M CM XVI




                          _BY THE SAME WRITER_

                         (Uniform with FRIENDS)

BATTLE (1915).
THOROUGHFARES (1914).
BORDERLANDS (1914).
FIRES (1912).
DAILY BREAD (1910).
AKRA THE SLAVE (1910).
STONEFOLDS (1907).




                             TO THE MEMORY
                                   OF
                             RUPERT BROOKE



    _He's gone._
    _I do not understand._
    _I only know_
    _That as he turned to go_
    _And waved his hand_
    _In his young eyes a sudden glory shone:_
    _And I was dazzled by a sunset glow._
    _And he was gone._

    23rd April, 1915.




                                CONTENTS

Rupert Brooke
William Denis Browne
Tenants
Sea-change
Gold
The Old Bed
Trees
Oblivion
Retreat
Colour
Night
The Orphans
The Pessimist
?
The Sweet-Tooth
Girl's Song
The Ice Cart
To E. M.
Marriage
Roses
For G.
Home




                             RUPERT BROOKE


                                   I.

    Your face was lifted to the golden sky
    Ablaze beyond the black roofs of the square,
    As flame on flame leapt, flourishing in air
    Its tumult of red stars exultantly,
    To the cold constellations dim and high;
    And as we neared, the roaring ruddy flare
    Kindled to gold your throat and brow and hair
    Until you burned, a flame of ecstasy.

    The golden head goes down into the night
    Quenched in cold gloom--and yet again you stand
    Beside me now with lifted face alight,
    As, flame to flame, and fire to fire you burn...
    Then, recollecting, laughingly you turn,
    And look into my eyes and take my hand.


                                  II.

    Once in my garret--you being far away
    Tramping the hills and breathing upland air,
    Or so I fancied--brooding in my chair,
    I watched the London sunshine feeble and grey
    Dapple my desk, too tired to labour more,
    When, looking up, I saw you standing there,
    Although I'd caught no footstep on the stair,
    Like sudden April at my open door.

    Though now beyond earth's farthest hills you fare,
    Song-crowned, immortal, sometimes it seems to me
    That, if I listen very quietly,
    Perhaps I'll hear a light foot on the stair,
    And see you, standing with your angel air,
    Fresh from the uplands of eternity.


                                  III.

    Your eyes rejoiced in colour's ecstasy
    Fulfilling even their uttermost desire,
    When, over a great sunlit field afire
    With windy poppies, streaming like a sea
    Of scarlet flame that flaunted riotously
    Among green orchards of that western shire,
    You gazed as though your heart could never tire
    Of life's red flood in summer revelry.

    And as I watched you little thought had I
    How soon beneath the dim low-drifting sky
    Your soul should wander down the darkling way,
    With eyes that peer a little wistfully,
    Half-glad, half-sad, remembering, as they see
    Lethean poppies, shrivelling ashen grey.


                                  IV.

    October chestnuts showered their perishing gold
    Over us as beside the stream we lay
    In the Old Vicarage garden that blue day,
    Talking of verse and all the manifold
    Delights a little net of words may hold,
    While in the sunlight water-voles at play
    Dived under a trailing crimson bramble-spray,
    And walnuts thudded ripe on soft black mould.

    Your soul goes down unto a darker stream
    Alone, O friend, yet even in death's deep night
    Your eyes may grow accustomed to the dark,
    And Styx for you may have the ripple and gleam
    Of your familiar river, and Charon's bark
    Tarry by that old garden of your delight.




                          WILLIAM DENIS BROWNE

                           (GALLIPOLI, 1915)

    Night after night we two together heard
    The music of the Ring,
    The inmost silence of our being stirred
    By voice and string.

    Though I to-night in silence sit, and you
    In stranger silence sleep,
    Eternal music stirs and thrills anew
    The severing deep.




                                TENANTS

    Suddenly, out of dark and leafy ways,
    We came upon the little house asleep
    In cold blind stillness, shadowless and deep,
    In the white magic of the full moon-blaze.
    Strangers without the gate, we stood agaze,
    Fearful to break that quiet, and to creep
    Into the home that had been ours to keep
    Through a long year