Memory Poem by Ruth Manning-Sanders

Enter, magician,—now the world is thine,
Robbed of its bitterness. Within this room
The regal sunlight, sifted froni the gloom.
Heaps up its dazzling radiance. Here the fine.
The gorgeous, and the tender colours weave.
Plucked from the drab, a gay magnificence
And here the song is purely eloquence.
And no false note shall make the hearer grieve.

Oh enter then, the magic gate's ajar.
The world awaits its king, the place without
Takes back the starveling in his ragged clout
To lay him down where all the beggars are;
A passing day shall give him burial.
With hands so nimble and with so quick zest
That those to follow trample on his rest.
Crowding the way to thine high festival.

Then let thy fears go howl, thy ghosts go moan.
Straying amid the tombs of such as die.
With pallid echo of an ancient cry,—
'Tis but a thin and failing undertone ;
Thou hearest not for laughter of the years
Bright harvested, and stir of coming Spring,
And wealth of birds whose passion bid them sing.
And the beloved voices of thy peers.

For all delight of all its anguish shorn,
Thou, the magician, gave immortal breath
And pinions to outrace dull-pluméd Death,
Clutching his shards and phantoms. Here is borne
Each passing gleam that lit to alchemise
The earth's brown face, each lovely dream that trod
The grejmess out of life, each friend, each god,
And in thy magic kingdom nothing dies.