Dear Swinburne, how fell you if Death felled himself?
Did the wind not last, had the running sun stumbled?
What knocks the stone from the clifftop shelf?
What rocks the sea still since the high tide humbled?
If all that remains remains all that that dies
And immortal soul lies forever relieved,
What am I left that your lyric decries
But bereaved?

The same words grow from your garden grave
Where the thorns of the wrought lead roses jingle,
But rocked by the roar of the wild wave
The words disperse and forever mingle.
Time can unravel the thorns and the weeds
And the wind and the sea and the sun and the rain,
Unravel Death and destroy his seeds
And remain.

I pray that your song stands stable and true
Through the covers I turn, on my lips when I sing
As the first day your meter upon the page drew
And your rhyme first ascended on nimble a wing;
If not, let you molder with meadows of roses,
As lovers are buried by solitary men,
Till I, upon every couplet that closes,
Read again.