William Kerr Poems

Under vague silver moonlight
The trees are lovely and ghostly,
In the pale blue of the night
There are few stars to see.
...

Secret and wise as nature, like the wind
Melancholy or light-hearted without reason,
And like the waxing or the waning moon
Ever pale and lovely: you are like these
...

Mere living wears the most of life away:
Even the lilies take thought for many things,
For frost in April and for drought in May,
And from no careless heart the skylark sings.
...

Daisies are over Nyren, and Hambledon
Hardly remembers any summer gone:
And never again the Kentish elms shall see
Mynn, or Fuller Pilch, or Colin Blythe.
...

Chestnut candles are lit again
For the dead that died in spring:
Dead lovers walk the orchard ways,
And the dead cuckoos sing.
...

How shall the living be comforted for the dead
When they are gone, and nothing's left behind
But a vague music of the words they said
And a fast-fading image in the mind?
...

When I seek the world through
For images of you,
Though apple-blossom is glad
...

Half-awake I walked
A dimly-seen sweet hawthorn lane
Until sleep came;
...