Et in Arcadia ego ... Sonnet

"What traveller soever wander here
In quest of peace and what is best of pleasure,
Let not his hope be overcast and drear
Because I, Death, am here to fix the measure
Of life, even in blameless Arcady.
Bay, laurel, myrtle, ivy never sere,
And fields flower-decorated all the year,
And streams that carry secrets to the sea,
And hills that hold back something evermore
Though wild their speech with clouds in thunder-roar, -
Yea, every sylvan sight and peaceful tone
Are thine to give thy days their purer zest.
Let not the legend grieve thee on this stone.
I Death am here. What then? My name is Rest."

Thomas Runciman

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Thomas Runciman

And there shall be no night there and they

Thomas Runciman, Simple Poetry

Song. A Gurly Breeze in Scotland.

Thomas Runciman, Simple Poetry

Sonnet.

Thomas Runciman, Simple Poetry

English

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I

To barren heath, bleak moor, and quaking fen,
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Or into trackless forest set
With trees, whose lofty umbrage met;
World-wearied Men withdrew of yore;
(Penance their trust, and prayer their store
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II

High lodged the 'Warrior', like a bird of prey;
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Sonnet.

By mead and marsh and sandhill clad with bent,
Soothed by the wistful musings of the wind
That in scarce listening ears are mildly dinned,
On plods the traveller till the day be spent,
And day-dreams end in dreamless night at last.
He hears, beyond the grey bent's silken waves,
The foam-embroidered waters ever cast
On sighing sands and into echoing caves.
And from the west, where the last sunset glow
Still lingers on the border hills afar,
Come pastoral sounds, attenuate and low,
Thence where the night shall bring, 'neath cloud and star,
Silence to yearn o'er folk worn with day's strife,
Lost in blank sleep to hope, regret, death, life.

[An alternative ending:

While from the West comes murmuring earthly noise,
Sweet, slumberous, attenuate an...

Thomas Runciman