Katharine Tynan

Here you will find the Poem A Lament of poet Katharine Tynan

A Lament

CLOUDS is under clouds and rain
For there will not come again 
Two, the beloved sire and son 
Whom all gifts were rained upon. 


Kindness is all done, alas, 
Courtesy and grace must pass, 
Beauty, wit and charm lie dead, 
Love no more may wreathe the head. 


Now the branch that waved so high 
No wind tosses to the sky; 
There's no flowering time to come, 
No sweet leafage and no bloom. 


Percy, golden-hearted boy, 
In the heyday of his joy 
Left his new-made bride and chose
The steep way that Honour goes. 


Took for his the deathless song 
Of the love that knows no wrong: 
Could I love thee, dear, so true 
Were not Honour more than you? 


(Oh, forgive, dear Lovelace, laid 
In this mean Procrustean bed!) 
Dear, I love thee best of all 
When I go, at England's call. 


In our magnificent sky aglow 
How shall we this Percy know 
Where he shines among the suns 
And the planets and the moons? 


Percy died for England, why, 
Here's a sign to know him by! 
There's one dear and fixèd star, 
There's a youngling never far. 


Percy and his father keep 
The old loved companionship, 
And shine downward in one ray 
Where at Clouds they wait for day.