Barcroft Boake: A Memoir (section 15): Some final words

[Editor: This is section 15 of “Barcroft Boake: A Memoir ”, by A. G. Stephens, published in Where the Dead Men Lie and Other Poems (1897).]

[Some final words]

Boake’s suicide was an appeal to Death to end his hopelessness as Life had ended hope. For him, of course, the wisdom of the act was conditioned by the circumstances: he could no other than he did. I have already indicated what those circumstances were. A weak heart and sensitive brain brought him into the Debatable Land: tobacco led him to the edge of the precipice. The memory of the mock hanging at Rocklands was always tempting him to look down the dizzy depths. He looked and drew back; looked and drew back; — then, to aid the pressure of daily worries and the prepossessions of a lifetime came the blow to his lover’s dreams, and, looking, he leaped.

The burial-ground where Boake lies is situated in an elevated part of North Sydney, some half-hour’s journey from the city proper. It is a small enclosure, thickly studded with the grotesque monuments conventionally associated with grief. Here and there a poorer grave, adorned with shells and coloured pebbles, more impresses the stranger: it is like the rudimentary art of a bower-bird, yet so pitifully earnest. Near the western boundary lies a narrow plot with plain stone kerbing, and this inscription on a marble slab —

26TH MARCH, 1866

BARCROFT HENRY BOAKE

2ND MAY, 1892

And one reflects on the world of impotent potentialities that died with the baffled idealist beneath.

It is no wonder that the Earth
Heaps shining Spring on Spring;
That flowers bud in tender birth,
And ever new birds sing:
This is the harvest-home of woe
From buried ecstasies below.

A mother’s hands let flowers fall
On little graves she loved:
The Earth, who loves and mothers all,
With the same impulse moved,
Doth sorrowfully every year
Strew flowers above her children dear.

A nation chants a threnody
For heroes laid to rest:
’Tis echoed back eternally
From Earth’s sob-swelling breast.
Listen! the birds repeat a dirge
For great souls passed beyond the verge.

When youth and maid in blither times,
When Thoughts were less than Things,
Brought in the May with joyous rhymes,
Dances and carollings,
The merry month seemed full of cheer;
But, ah! ’t was borne upon a bier.

And so, to minds attuned with it,
The eternal rhythm doth sound
Lament for graces infinite
Hid in the hollow ground:
The most delicious draught of joy
The World-Grief will with tears alloy.

Thus every hope destroyed in life
In death has left its sign:
The All hath conquered in the strife
Though Each for ever pine:
A moment means eternity,
A sand-speck all infinity,
And from this poor humanity
We argue the Divine.

Source:
Barcroft Boake, Where the Dead Men Lie and Other Poems, Sydney (NSW): Angus and Robertson, 1897, pp. 205-208

Editor’s notes:
Although the authorship of the poem in this section is not specified, it is believed that it was written by A. G. Stephens, who was a poet. In the Memoir the writings of Barcroft H. Boake (his letters, as well as his three poems) and of Barcroft C. Boake (Bartie’s father) were all in a smaller font; however, this poem was in the same standard font as was used for the writings of A. G. Stephens, indicating that AGS was the poem’s author.

bier = a stand upon which a coffin is placed prior to burial

dirge = a song, chant, or music, especially of a mournful nature and slow, used for a funeral, memorial, or commemoration; a lamentation for the dead

doth = (archaic) does

hath = (archaic) has

threnody = a lament; a song, hymn, or poem expressing lamentation or sorrow for the dead

’tis = (archaic) a contraction of “it is”

’t was = (archaic) a contraction of “it was”