IN MEMORIAM—MAURICE HEWLETT.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19162, 19 November 1927, Page 13

IN MEMORIAM—MAURICE HEWLETT.

(Obiit, 13/6/23*.) Now grey in dawnlight the olives sheeny Turn to silver and hail the sun; And blithely singing, the contadini Climb the slopes where the long vines runIn years gone by there wandered I, And there before me had wandered one.. With Simonetta there walked my master When peaches bloomed on the old rampart, And there in front of her feet he cast her Blooms in pledge of his gallant heart. The crickets there made glad the air, The long green lizards would glide and dart. And_aU about him the air was parted By ghostly spirits no longer mute; Boccaccio laughed and the brokenhearted Alighieri set hand to lute; And strife and wrong were turned to song, And Love and lordship of man and brute. For out of the Tuscan earth he fashioned Men and women with veins that ran Hot with blood in a tale impassioned Of how love fared or a feud began; His own in gold were fitly told As that of the good Samaritan. For such as fell by the road he greeted Knightly ever nor left them prone; Not for him were the brave all sheeted In old armour of carven stone, But more than art was our human part That toiled, defeated, and toiled alone. And still for Maurice were stream and mountain Living souls and the myths not vain; Fair Ceres smiled and unsealed a fountain, Washed our wheat with her silver rain; And many a man was blest of Pan By Sarum old or the Lombard Plain. Now dust to dust! When the light is dawning, Him no olive with silver tress Shall shade from sunburn, no trellis'd awning Tempt with wine of the dryads' press; But he shall find our dusk as kind, Onr rain as sweet to his weariness-

Bury him deeply. An old God's-acre Well' befits him. Although he drew Tuscan beauty and praised it 3 Maker Well so doing, not less he knew An English hearth, an English garth And yeomen under an English yew. —WILFRID THORLEY, in the "London Mercury." *See "Earthwork out of Tuscany," "A Masque of Dead Florentines," "Fond Adventures," "The Song of the Plow," "Lore of Proserpine," and "Wiltshire Essays." -