To George Sterling: A Valediction

I Farewell, a late farewell! Tearless and unforgetting, Alone, aloof, I twine Cypress and golden rose, plucked at the chill sunsetting, Laurel, amaracus, and dark December vine Into a garland wove not too unworthily For thee who seekest now an asphodel divine. Though immaterial the leaf and blossom he, Haply they shall outlinger these the seasons bring, The seasons take, and tell of mortal monody Through many a mortal spring. II Once more, farewell! Naught is to do, naught is to say, Naught is to sing but sorrow! For grievous is the night, and dolorous the day In this one hell of all the damned we wander thorough. Thou hast departed—and the dog and swine abide, The fetid-fingered ghouls will delve, on many a morrow In charnel, urn and grave: the sun shall lantern these, Oblivious, till they too have faltered and have died, And are no more than pestilential breath that flees On air unwalled and wide. III Let ape and pig maintain their council and cabal: In ashes gulfward hurled, Thou art gone forth with all of loveliness, with all Of glory long withdrawn from a desertless world. Now let the loathlier vultures of the soul convene: They have no wings to follow thee, whose flight is furled Upon oblivion's nadir, or some lost demesne Of the pagan dead, vaulted with perfume and with fire, Where blossoms immarcescible in vespertine Strange amber air suspire. IV Peace, peace! for grief and bitterness avails not ever, And sorrow wrongs thy sleep: Better it is to be as thou, who art forever As part and parcel of the infinite fair deep— Who dwellest now in mystery, with days hesternal And time that is not time: we have no need to weep, For woe may not befall, where thou in ways supernal Hast found the perfect love that is oblivion, The poppy-tender lips of her that reigns, eternal, In realms not of the sun. V Peace, peace! Idle is our procrastinating praise, Hollow the harps of laud; And not necessitous the half-begrudgèd bays To thee, whose song forecrowned thee for a lyric god, Whose name shall linger strangely, in the sunset years, As music from a more enchanted period— An echo flown upon the changing hemispheres, Re-shaped with breath of alien maiden, alien boy, Re-sung in future cities, mixed with future tears, And with remoter joy. VI From Aphrodite thou hast turned to Proserpine: No treason hast thou done, For neither goddess is a goddess more divine, And verily, my brother, are the twain not one? We too, as thou, with hushed desire and silent paean, Beyond the risen dark, beyond the fallen sun, Shall follow her, whose pallid breasts, on shores Lethean, Are favorable phares to barges of the world; And we shall find her there, even as the Cytherean, In love and slumber furled.