Chapter VII (2)

Now over the tropic's broad ellipse
The sprite hath passed, as fleet and fast
As the light of falling stars, that cast
A sudden radiance and eclipse;
And all the buds that are folded close
As the inner leaves of an unblown rose,
In bulb, or cone, or scale, or sheath,
And sealed with the odorous gums that breathe
Like the breath of the singing and sighing pine,
When the dews are falling at evening time,
Through cone, and sheath, and bulb, and scale--
Tremble, and cry All hail!

And look where a rosier beam hath cleft
The damp and fragrant-smelling earth,
A handful of snow-drops peeping forth;
As if King Winter had dropped and left--
Stumbling and tripping the steep hills down--
Had clutched his robe and dropped his crown:
Or as if the very snow had power,
Out of itself to fashion a flower;
So vase-like, slender, and exquisite,
Like an alabaster lamp alit,--

And shining with a sea-green light,
As if it had but newly come
Up from some subterranean palace,
The haunt of fairy or of gnome,
With its waxen taper still alight,
And beaming in its leafy chalice,
That lit the revellers down below,
When the nights were long, and the moon was low
You might have heard, far-off and sweet,
The sound of the elfin revelries,
Like a bugle strain blown over seas,
And the patter and beat of dancing feet,--
If you had been like me awake,
What time the Great Bear seems to shake,
Down through the trackless realms of air,
Frost-lances from his shaggy hair;
And all around--beneath--across,
The round globe lies stabbed through with frost.

Now the touches of the sun,
Like some potent alchemist,
In heat and dews, in rain and mist,
As in a subtle menstruum,
Hath dissolved the icy charm,
And laid on that cold breast of hers,--
Nature's breast--that faintly stirs,
With his fragrant kisses warm,
Sweet as myrrh and cinnamon,--
Snow-drops, spring's bright harbingers,
First-born children of the sun.

Like a sudden burst of leaf and bloom,
The sun shines redly through the gloom,
And the wind with its many melodies
Hath a murmurous sound like the noise of bees,
Singing and humming,--blowing and growing,
Of springing blade, and of fountain flowing;
And night and silence under the ground
Listen--and thrill--and move to the sound,
And answer, Spring is coming!

EASTER BELLS

Oh bells of Easter morn, oh solemn sounding bells,
Which fill the hollow cells
Of the blue April air with a most sweet refrain,
Ye fill my heart with pain.

For when, as from a thousand holy altar-fires,
A thousand resonant spires
Sent up the offering--the glad thanksgiving strain--
"The Lord is risen again!"

He went from us who shall return no more, no more!
I say the sad words o'er,
And they are mixed and blent with your triumphant psalm,
Like bitterness and balm,

We stood with him beside the black and silent river,
Cold, cold and soundless ever;
But there our feet were stayed--unloosed our clasping fond,
And he has passed beyond.

And still that solemn hymn, like smoke of sacrifice,
Clomb the blue April skies,
And on our anguish placed its sacramental chrism,
"Behold, the Lord is risen!"

Oh, bells of Easter morn! your mighty voices reach
A deeper depth than speech;
We heard, "Because He liveth _they_ shall live with Him;"
This was our Easter hymn.

And while the slow vibrations swell, and sink, and cease,
They bring divinest peace,
For we commit our best beloved to the dust,
In sure and certain trust.

IN THE SIERRA NEVADA

I lift my spirit to your cloudy thrones,
And feel it broaden to your vast expanse,
Oh! mountains, so immeasurably old,
Crowned with bald rocks and everlasting cold,
That melts not underneath the sun's fierce glance,
Peak above peak, fixed, dazzling, ice and stones.

Down your steep sides quick torrents leap and roar,
And disappear, in gloomy gorges sunk,
Fringed with black pines on dizzy verges high--
Poised, trembling to the thunder and the cry
Of the lost waters, through each giant trunk,
And farthest twig and tassel evermore.

Behold far down the mountain herdsman's ranche,
The rough road winding past his lonely door,
And in his ears, by day and night, the sound
Of mad waves plunging down the gulfs profound,
The tempest's gathering cry, the dull deep roar.
And the long thunder of the avalanche!

Night broods along the vallies while your peaks
Are pink and purple with the rays of morn,
And filmy tints that swim the depths of space,
To reach, and kiss you first upon the face,
Before the world awakes, and day is born,
To flush with colder gleam your rugged cheeks.

And last, and longest lingering, the light
Is on your mighty foreheads, when, the sun
Sets in the sea, and makes a palace fair
For his repose, of crystal wave and air,--
Ye seem to stoop, and smile to look upon
The fallen monarch from your silent height.

Vallies are green about your rocky feet,
And sweet with clambering vines, and waving corn,
And breath of flowers, and gold of ripening fruit;
Cities send up their smoke, and man and brute
Beneath your wide embrazure have been born
And died for ages, yet Ye hold your seat.

I lift my spirit up to you, and seem
To feel your vastness penetrate my soul;
And faintly see, far-off, and looming broad
And dread, the grandeur of the world of God,
And thrill to be a part of the great whole,
Which towers above me, a stupendous dream.

SUMMER RAIN

O rain, Summer Rain! forever,
Out of the crystal spheres,
And cool from my brain the fever,
And wash from my eyes the tears

Stir gently the blossoming clover,
In the hollows dewy and deep,--
Somewhere they are blossoming over
The spot where I shall sleep.

Asleep from this wearisome aching,
With my arms crossed under my head,
I shall hear without awaking,
The rain that blesses the dead.

And the ocean of man's existence,--
The surges of toil and care,
Shall break and die in the distance,
But never reach me there.

And yet--I fancy it often--
I should stir in my shrouded sleep,
And struggle to rise in my coffin,
If he came there to weep.

Among the dead--or the angels--
Though ever so faint and dim,
I should know that voice in a thousand,
And stretch my hands to him.

But the trouble of life and living,
And the burden of daily care,
And the endless sin, and forgiving,
Are greater than I can bear.

So rain, Summer Rain, and cover
The meadows dewy and deep,
And freshen the blossoming clover,
And sing me to dreamless sleep.

A BABY'S DEATH

A little white soul went up to God,
Out of the mire of the city street;
It grew like a flower in the highway broad,
Close to the trample of heedless feet.

It fell like a snow-flake over night,
Into the ways by vile ones trod;
It sparkled--dissolved in the morning light,
And the little white soul went up to God.

Dainty, flower-soft, waxen thing,
Its clear eyes opened on this bad earth,
And the little shuddering soul took wing,
By the gate of death, from the gate of birth.

Not for those innocent lips and eyes,
The words and the ways of sin and strife;
The pure flower opened in paradise,
Fast by the banks of the river of life.

Yea, little victors, who never fought;
And crowned, though ye never ran the race,
His blood your innocent lives hath bought,
And ye stand before Him and see His face!

For this, oh Father! we give Thee thanks,
By the little graves, and the tear-wet sod,
They stand before Thee in shining ranks,
And the little white souls are safe with God!

CHRISTMAS

The birth day of the Christ child dawneth slow
Out of the opal east in rosy flame,
As if a luminous picture in its frame--
A great cathedral window, toward the sun
Lifted a form divine, which still below
Stretched hands of benediction;--while the air
Swayed the bright aureole of the flowing hair
Which lit our upturned faces;--even so
Look on us from the heavens, divinest One
And let us hear through the slow moving years.
Long centuries of wrongs, and crimes, and tears,--
The echo of the angel's song again,
Peace and good will, good will and peace to men,
A little space make silence,--that our ears,
Filled with the din of toil and moil and pain
May catch the jubilant rapture of the skies,--
The glories of the choirs of paradise.

The hills still tremble when the thunders cease
Of the loud diapason,--and again
Through the rapt stillness steals the hymn of peace;
Melodious and sweet its far refrain
Dying in distance, as the shadows die
Of white wings vanished up the morning sky,
As farther still--and thinner--more remote--
A film of sound, the aerial voices float--
Peace and good will, good will and peace to men!

MY GARDEN

Only the commonest flowers
Grow in my garden small,
Like buttercups, and bouncing-bets,
And hollyhocks by the wall,
And sunflowers nodding their stately heads,
Like grenadiers so tall.
But the purple pansy grows beneath--
The sweetest flower of all--

And tiny feathery filmy ferns
You scarce can see at all,
Fleck the shady side of the stones,
So dainty, fine and small

Only the commonest flowers
Grow in this garden of mine,
The larkspur flaunting her sky-blue cap,
And the twinkling celandine
Shakes her jewels of freckled gold,
And drinks her honey-wine,
Making a cup of her lucent stem,
So slender and so fine.

You hear the waves that dimple and slide,
Slide and shimmer and shine,
Under her fairy-slippered feet--
My golden celandine.

The hands of the little children
Gather them without fear;
Wonders of beauty and gladness
To them my flowers appear.
I have seen them bend to listen,
With poised and patient ear,
The curfew chime of the fairies,
In the lily's bell to hear.

Oh, blessed and innocent children,
With eyes so crystal clear,
That ye look with the dual vision
Of the baby and the seer.

To you the stars and the angels,
And the heavens themselves are near,
And the amaranths of paradise,
That blossom all the year:
I would I could see what ye see,
And hear what ye can hear.

RIVER SONG

Swift and silent and strong
Under the low-browed arches,
Through culverts, and under bridges,
Sweeping with long forced marches
Down to the ultimate ridges,--
The sand, and the reeds, and the midges,
And the down-dropping tassels of larches,
That border the ocean of song.

Swift and silent and deep
Through the noisome and smoke-grimed city,
Turning the wheels and the spindles,
And the great looms that have no pity,--
Weight, and pulley, and windlass,
And steel that flashes and kindles,
And hears no forest-learnt ditty,
Not even in dreams and sleep.

Blithe and merry and sweet
Over its shallows singing,--
I hear before I awaken
The Bound of the church-bells ringing,
And the sound of the leaves wind-shaken,
Complaining and sun-forsaken,
And the oriole warbling and singing,
And the swish of the wind in the wheat

Sweet and tender and true!
From meadows of blossoming clover,
Where sleepy-eyed cows are lowing,
And bobolinks twittering over,--
Ebbing and falling and flowing--
Singing and gliding and going--
The river--my silver-shod lover,
Down to the infinite blue.

Deep, and tender, and strong!
With resonant voice and hole--
To far away sunshiny places,
Haunts of the bee and the swallow,
Where the Sabbath is sweet with the praises
Of dumb things, of weeds and of daisies,--
Oh river! I hear thee--I follow
To the ocean where I too belong.

THE RETURN

I have been where the roses blow,
Where the orange ripens its gold,
And the mountains stand with their peaks of snow,
To fence away the cold,
Where the lime and the myrtle lent
Their fragrance to the air,
To make the land of my banishment
More exquisitely fair.

And I heard the ring dove call
To his mate in the blossoming trees,
And I saw the white waves heave and fall.
Far away over southern seas.
I listened along the beach,
By the shore of the shifting sea,
To the waves, till I knew their murmured speech,
And the message they bore to me.

And I watched the great sails furled.
Like the wings of some ocean bird,
That brought me, out of another world,
A warning, and a word;
For still beside my way,
By shore or sunlit wave,
There journeyed with me night and day,
The shadow of a grave.

Oh, friends! my heart went forth
To you with a yearning cry,
To be taken back to my native North--
To be taken home to die.
For sweeter than southern suns,
Or the blossoms of summer lands,
Are the faces of my little ones,
And the touch of their tender hands.

Come closer to my side,
Your eyes are as clear and true
As if they were stars my way to guide,
My darlings, back to you.
Oh God! my heart is stirred
With thankfulness and rest,
To reach at last, like a wounded bird,
The shelter of its nest

Oh, faint pulse, throbbing long!
And weary and fluttering breath,
Twas the mother-love that kept you strong,
Though face to face with death.
But now my eyes are dim,
And my breath comes weak and slow,
Sing to me softly the evening hymn,
And kiss me ere I go.

Come close for the angel waits--
The angel with gentle hand,
To open for me the shadowy gates,
Into the silent land.
Oh, voices sweet and clear
What light is in the skies?
Is it your glad voices that I hear--
Or the hymns of paradise?

Farewell your faces fade--
Fade--fade--and disappear
In the light no earthly cloud may shade,
Heaven's morning dawning clear.
Oh, land of rest so fair
By angel footsteps trod,
I shall wait for you, beloved there,
In the paradise of God.

VOICES OF HOPE

It is the hither side, O Hope,
And afternoon; our shadows slope
Backward along the mountain cope.

The early morning was so sweet,
We seemed to climb with winged feet,
Like moving vapors fine and fleet,

Not more elastic poised and swung
Harebell or yellow adder's tongue,
Nor blither any bird that sung.

Thy light foot bent not any stem
Of frailest plant, whose diadem
In passing kissed thy garment's hem.

O Hope! so near me and so bright,
Thy foot above me on the height,
I might not touch thy garments white.

Thy lifted face, so fair, so rapt,
Like sunshine rolled and overlapped
Cliff, slope, and tall peak thunder-capped.

Thy voice to me like silver brooks
Down dropped from secret mountain nooks,
Still drew me, like thy radiant looks.

Nor scorching sun, nor beating rain,
Nor soil, nor grime, nor travel-stain,
With thee, were weariness or pain.

But now--it is the afternoon
Behind, the mountain summit's gloom:
Before, night's shadows gather soon.

O Hope! where art thou?--rough and steep
The way has grown; I faint and weep,
Beside me torrents toss and leap,

And far below, unseen for tears,
The river where life disappears,
Uplifts its thunder to my ears.

Canst thou, with thy serener eyes,
Over the flood God's paradise,
Behold in awful beauty rise?

Far off I seem to see thee stand,
Shading rapt eyes with radiant hand,
To scan that unknown glorious land.

The glory of that unseen place,
Gathers and brightens o'er thy face,
And fills thy looks with tender grace.

O, Hope divine '--_I_ would behold
Those shining spires, those streets of gold:
But ah! the waves are deadly cold!

I hear the thunder and the sweep
Of waves; deep calleth unto deep;
The pathway ends, abrupt and steep.

Yet, soft beside that solemn shore,
I hear thy voice above its roar:
"Life is a dream-and it is o'er;

"The night is past--behold the day,
O new-born soul--O child of clay,
O bird uncaged and still astray;

"Take through the universe thy road;
All paths lead up to His abode,
Converging at the Mount of God!"

IN THE COUNTRY.

Here the sunshine, filtering down,
Through leaves of emerald, dun and brown,
Is green instead of golden
And the hum and roar of the distant town
In an endless hush is holden.

Twinkling bright through the shadowing limes.
The brook rains a sparkle of silver rhymes
On the dragon-fly, its neighbour;
It pays no duty in dollars and dimes,
For its work is all love-labour.

Here are no spindles, nor wheels to be whirled,
No forges nor looms from the outside world,
Stunning the ear with clamour;
You hear but the whisper of leaves unfurled,
And the tap of the woodpecker's hammer

Here are no books to be written or read,
But cushions of softest moss instead,
Without a care to cumber;
And fern-leaf fans for the weary head,
Soothing the soul to slumber

Oh! come from the dusty haunts of trade,
From the desk, the ledger, the loom, the spade;
There is neither toil nor payment.
Forget for once, in this peaceful shade,
The sordid ways in which dollars are made,
And food and drink and raiment.

Consider the lilies, arrayed so fair,
In robes that an eastern king might wear,
Though never an eye may heed them;
And the sparrows, of whom His hand takes care,
For our Father in Heaven feeds them.

His rainbow spans the heavenly blue;
His eye takes note of the drops of dew,
And the sunset's golden arrows;
And shall He not take thought of you,
O man, as well as the sparrows?

SCIENCE, THE ICONOCLAST.

_"Oh! spare dual idols of the past,
Whose lips are dumb, whose eyes are dim;
Truth's diadem is not for him
Who comes, the fierce Iconoclast:
Who wakes the battle's stormy blast,
Hears not the angel's choral hymn" _
THE IMAGE-BREAKER

Ah me! for we have fallen on evil days,
When science, with remorseless cold precision,
Puts out the flame of poetry, and lays
Her double-convex lens on fancy's vision.
When not a star has longer leave to shine,
Unweighed, unanalysed, reduced to gases,--
Resolved to something in the chemist's line,
By those miraculously long-ranged glasses.

The awful mysteries which Nature locks
Deep in her stony bosom, hid for ages,--
The hieroglyphics of primeval rocks,
Are glibly written out on short-hand pages.
Within that rocky scroll, her palimpsest,
The hand of time still writes, and still effaces
Records in dolomite--and shale--and schist,
The pre-historic history of Races.

Cave-dwellers, under nameless strata hid,
Vast bones of extinct monsters that were fossil,
Ere the first Pharaoh built the pyramid,
And shaped in stone his sepulchre colossal.
What undiscovered secret yet remains
Beneath the swirl and sway of billows tidal,
Since Art triumphant led the deep in chains,
And on the mane of ocean laid her bridle.

Into those awful crypts of cycles dead,
Shrouded and mute, each in its mummy-chamber,
Her daring step intrudes without more dread
Than to behold a fly embalmed in amber.
Stars--motes--worlds--molecules, and microcosms,
Her level gaze sweeps down the page recorded,
And withers all its myths, and fairy blossoms,
Condemned to explanations dull and sordid.

Alike the sculptures of the graceful Greeks,
Grey with the moss of eld and venerable,
The fauns, the nymphs, the half-defaced antiques,
The gods and men of mythologic fable,
And legends of steel-casqued and mailed men,
The old heroic tales of love and glory,
Of knight, and palmer, and the Saracen,
And the crusaders of enchanted story;

Grim ghosts and goblins, and more harmless sprites
That peopled once our juvenile romances,
And made us shiver in our beds o'nights,
Science has banished those bewitching fancies;
And given us the merest husks instead,
The very bones and skeleton of nature,
Filling those peaceful hours with shapes of dread,
And horrid ranks of Latin nomenclature.

Blest is the Indian on his native plains,
And blest the wandering Tartar, happy nomad,
Fire-worshippers, whose twinkling altar-fanes
Still gleam on lonely peaks beyond Allahbad.
Shadows yet linger round their ruined towers,
And whisper from the caverns and the islands,
Their Memnon still is eloquent, but ours
Stares on with shut lips in an age-long silence.

Not so! The age still ripens for her needs
The flower, the man. Behold her slow still finger
Points where He comes, beneath whose feet the weeds
Bloom out immortal flowers, the immortal Singer!
Forward, not backward all the ages press;
New stars arise, of whose bright occultation
No glory of the dying past could guess:
Still grows the unfinished miracle, Creation.

Oh! Poet of the years that are to come,
Singing at dawn thy idyls sweet and tender--
The preludes of the great millenium
Of song, to drown the world in light and splendour
Awake, arise! thou youngest born of time!
Through flaming sunsets with red banners furled,
The nations call thee to thy task sublime,
To sing the new songs of a newer world!

WHAT THE OWL SAID TO ME.

The moon went under a ragged cloud,
The owl cried out of the ruined wall,
Slow and solemn, distinct and loud,
His melancholy call:
Tu-whit, tu-whit, tu-whoo!
Like a creature in a shroud.

Across the night in a silver chain,
While a lonesome wind arose and died,
Slow stepped the ghostly feet of the rain;
The owl from the wall replied:
Tu-whit, tu-whoo, hoo-hoo'
With a peal of goblin laughter,
And silence fell thereafter.

Weird fingers of the wandering rain,
Reaching out of the hollow dark,
Paused and tapped at my window-pane,--
A muffled voice cried, Hark!
Tu-whit, tu-whit, tu-whoo!
The moon is drowned in the dark,
And the world belongs to me and you!

OUR VOLUNTEERS.

Where shall we write your names, ye brave!
Where build for you a monument,
Who lie in many a sylvan grave,
Stretched half across the continent!
Young, bright and brave, the very flower
And choice of all we had to give,
With you what glory ceased to live,--
Or lives again in hearts of men.
An inspiration and a power!

For when one sunny day in June,
A sudden war-cry shook the land,
As if from out clear skies at noon
Had dropped the lightning's deadly brand--
Ah then, while rang our British cheers,
And pealed the bugle, rolled the drum,
We saw the Nation rise like one!
Swift formed the files,--a thousand miles
Of them, our gallant Volunteers!

Deep clanged the bells, the drums did beat,
And still from east and west they came;
Echoed the street with martial feet,
From north, from south, with hearts aflame:
Ah, still the tires of freedom burn,--
Be witness, Ridgway's silent shade,
No foe shall dare our land invade,
While hearts like those that met the foes,
Still beat like theirs,--the undismayed,
The brave, who never will return.

Our Country holds them in her heart,
Shrined with her mountains and her rivers;
And still for them her proud lip quivers,
And tears to her great eyelids start:
But they are tears of love and pride,
And she shall tell to coming years
The story of her Volunteers,
For all their names are hers and fame's--
The brave who live, the brave who died.

NIGHT,--A PHANTASY

Night! the horrible wizard Night!
The dumb and terrible Night
Hath drawn his circle of magic, round
Over the sky, and over the ground,
Without a sound.
Ah me, what woeful phantoms rise,
With ice-cold hands and pitiless eyes,
As stars grow out of the summer skies,
Tangible things to mortal sight,
Under the hands of the wizard Night!

Night! the mystical prophet, Night!
The haunted and awful Night!
With the trail of his garment's shadowy fall,
Soundless and black as a funeral pall,
Now enters his dread laboratory.
A wan, and faint, and wavering glory
Shines from a veiled lamp somewhere hidden.
Like a lily in a grave:
And things unholy, and things forbidden,--
Hands that have long been the earth-worm's prey,
And shrouded faces out of the clay.
Rise and fill the enchanted cave
With a pale and deathly light,--
The haunted and awful Night!

Night! the abhorred magician Night!
The black astrologer Night!
Night is the world!--I shiver with fright:--
The air is full of evil things,
The coil and glitter of snaky rings,
And, the tremor of vast invisible wings,
That are not heard but felt:
They touch my hair, my hand, my cheek,
They mope and mouth, but they never speak
To utter their awful history.
Oh, when will the darkness break and melt,
Like blocks of ice on a golden reef,
And little by little, as leaf by leaf,
In light and color and form increased,
The rose of morning blooms in the east,--
The old yet ever new mystery!
And I fall on my knees to worship the light
That casts out the evil demon of Night,
And hallows with blossoms, like prayers, the way
Of another new day.

A MONODY

On the early and lamented death of George and Maggie Rosseaux,
brother and sister, who died within one week of each other in the
autumn of 1875. Young, beautiful and beloved, they were indeed
lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they were
not divided.

Pace slowly, black horses, step stately and solemn--
One by one--two by two--stretches out the long column;
Pass on with your burden, the sound of our tears
Will not reach the deaf ears.

Beneath the black shadow of funeral arches,
Stepping slow to the rhythm of funeral marches;
Pass on down the street where their steps were so gay,
And so light, yesterday.

Where it seems if we turn we shall clasp them and hold them,
Our hands shall embrace--and our eyes shall behold them,--
So near are the confines of hither, and yonder,--
So world-wide asunder!

Oh, lovers and friends! ye were youth and glad weather,
And beauty and strength, and all bright things together,
With the smile on your lips, and the flower at your breast
Have ye gone to your rest.

The dull lives of others move on, while the splendid
Beginnings of yours are all broken and ended,
The high hopes, the bright dreams, and youth's confident
trust,
Gone down to the dust.

Step slowly, black steeds, at the head of the column,
Breathe softly, dead marches, so mournfully solemn;
Ye bear from our sight what no morn shall restore
Nevermore, nevermore.

Oh, beloved--oh, wept for!--beyond the dark river
Are the lives incomplete, there made perfect forever?
Oh, wave but a hand through the darkness, to tell
It is well with ye--well.

Profound is the darkness--the silence unbroken--
No glimmer of pale hands comes back as a token:
Yet still in our hearts we have heard the words spoken:--
"He hath overcome death--He hath passed through the grave--
He is able to save."

MINNIE

"_And Jesu called a little child unto him_."
MATT. xviii. 2.

Oh, my blossom, my darling, whose dimpled hands are cold!
Oh, my baby, my treasure, laid under the green mould!
Earth pressed on thy closed eyelids, and on thy sunny hair,
And folded hands, and smiling lips, so exquisitely fair.

Cold and dark are the night dews around thy grassy bed,
Instead of warm and loving arms beneath thy sunny head;
Oh, my blossom, my darling, the long nights through, awake,
I stretch my empty arms for thee,--my heart--my heart will break.

The autumn leaves are falling ungathered on the hill,
The soft October sun is bright, but the little hands are still;
And the little feet that chased them as frolicksome and light,
Have lain beneath them--can it be?--a whole day and a night.

The autumn winds will sigh and moan; the dreary, dreary rain
Will drench thy lowly pillow, sweet, with tears like mine in vain;
And weary, weary months drag on, and long years stretch before,
Whilst thou to me, my beautiful, returnest nevermore.

Beyond our earthly vision--beyond the burial sod,
Where the palm trees and the amaranths grow on the hills of God,
Oh, golden gates, that stand within the holy, heavenly place,
Open for me but a little, that I may behold her face.

Open for me but a little, that I may touch her hand,
And hear her sing the hymn she loved about "The Promised Land."
Oh, my blossom! Oh, my darling! though it be but in a dream,
Speak to me,--I watch--I listen,--speak to me across the stream.

Kneeling--praying at the threshold--day and night, and night and day,
When I rise with heavy eyelids--when I kneel at night to pray--
Still I wait to catch the far-off music of the starry hymn,
Till I hear the voice that called thee bid me rise and enter in.

THE GOLDEN WEDDING.

Inscribed to OUR FATHER AND MOTHER, and read on that Anniversary,
FEBRUARY 15TH, 1876.

A half a century of time,
The mingled pain and bliss
That make the history of life
Between that day and this;
Two lives that in that morning light,
Together were made one,
Now standing where the shadows fall
Athwart the setting sun.

How long it seems!--the devious way.
And full of toil and pain,--
Yet love and peace kept house with them,
And love and peace remain.
Though youth and strength and youthful friends
Were left upon the road
Long since, an honest man is still
The noblest work of God.

No famous deeds, no acts achieved
In battle or in state
Make memorable this festal day,
The day we celebrate:
Divided from the common lot
By neither fame nor pelf,
Our hearts revere the man who loves
His neighbour as himself.

The fragrance of the Christian's life,
Though humble and unknown,
Is a more precious heritage
Than heirship to a throne.
That lowly roof--what memories
Of blessings cluster there,
Around the hearthstone consecrate
By fifty years of prayer!

The shaded lamp, the cheerful fire,
Our Mother's patient look,
The firelight on her silver hair,
And on the Holy Book;--
Where e'er our erring feet may stray,
The welcome waits the same,--
That light, that look will follow still,
And soften and reclaim.

Type of the Fatherhood of God,
Whose love has kept us still,
In all the changeful scenes of life
Secure from every ill,
And brought our long-divided band,
Not one of us astray,
Around our Father's board to keep
This Golden Wedding Day.

Oh ye beloved and revered!
Our hearts make thankful prayer,
That still around our household hearth
There is no vacant chair.
God grant that we may be of those
Who sing the heavenly psalm,
And sit together at the feast,
The marriage of the Lamb!

VERSES WRITTEN IN MARY'S ALBUM.

In your beautiful book, dear Mary,
With pages so white and fair,
I pause ere I trace the first sentence,
And thoughtfully breathe a prayer:--

That in the dew of the morning,
Ere the shadows begin to fall,
You may turn with a child's devotion
To the Book that is best of all:--

And learn with the gentle Mary,
At the Saviour's feet to stay,
And to choose that better portion
Which shall never be taken away.

Ah! lovely and thrice beloved,
Sitting at Jesus' feet,
In the shady walks of Bethany,
And the summer twilight sweet,--

With the thrilling palms and the olives,
Listening overhead,
To that wonderful voice whose music
Had power to waken the dead!

Even thus through life's grave-shadowed valleys,
We may walk with that Heavenly Friend,
With a child's loving faith in His promise
To be with us unto the end.

So I ask for my Mary, not grandeur,
Nor the wealth, nor the fame of the day,
But that which the world cannot give her,
The peace which it takes not away.

THE WOODS IN JUNE.

In the sleep-haunted gloom
Born of the slumbrous twilight in these shades,
These vast and venerable collonades,
I welcome thee, dear June!

And while with head reclined,
And limbs aweary with my woodland walk,
I listen to the low melodious talk
Of leaves and singing wind,

The merry roundelay
Of the swart ploughman, sowing summer grain,
And tinkling sheep-bell on the distant plain,
And pastures far away,

Come with a soft refrain,
Like a faint echo from the outer world,
While Peace sits by me with her white wings furled,
Within my green domain.

This is my palace, where
Great trunks are amber pillars to support
The blue roof of the vast and silent court,
In clustered columns fair:

And underneath, the bloom
Of water-lilies through the fragrant night
Of these dim arches spreads a perfumed light,
Even at highest noon.

Down dropping all day long,
With a most musical cadence in the hall,
A wandering stream lets its slow waters fall
In twinkling rhythmic song.

Hither the vagrant bee,
From the broad fields and sunshine all astray,
Loiters the idle hours of noon away,
In golden dreams like me.

And from my window frame,
This oriel window opening on the sky,
I see the white barques of the clouds drift by,
With prows of rosy flame.

Fantastical and strange,
Their purple sails go floating o'er the deep,
Like shadows through the summer land of sleep,
In never ending change.

The wild shy things which roam
The woods, and live in bough and tree and grot,
Flutter and chirp unscared, they fear me not,
For I too am at home.

And feel my heart in tune
With the great heart of Nature, and the voice
Of all the glad bright creatures that rejoice
In the green woods of June.

THE ISLE OF SLEEP.

In those dark mornings, deep in June,
When brooding birds stir in the nest,
And heavy dews slip down the leaves,
And drop into the rose's breast,
I woke and looked into the east,
And saw no sign of coming day,
The pale cold morning rolled in mist,
Slept on the hill-tops far away.

My window looked into the dawn,
The slumbering dawn that was so nigh,
The shadow of the hills was drawn
In waving lines against the sky.
But warmer hues began to tip
The edges of the mountain cloud
And morning's rosy cheek and lip
Glowed softly through her snow-pale shroud.

I turned and gazed into the west,
The river murmured in my ear
'Gone night, and silence, dreams and rest,
Another day of toil is here.'

I would I had a fairy boat,
With every swift bright sail unfurled,
To fly beyond the west, and float
With night into the under world.

My head sank lower on my arm,
My eyes re-closed in sleepy bliss,
While fancy wove her subtle charm,
My dream did shape itself to this:--
Upon a shore whose sands of gold
Sloped down into a silver sea,
Her radiant pinions all unrolled,
A fairy boat did wait for me.

And Night with all her splendours pale
Did walk before me on the deep,
The stars looked through her azure veil,
And hand in hand with her went Sleep.
Beyond the hills, into the night
My boat went drifting like the wind,
The stars paled round us, and the light
Died on our pathway far behind.

And cloudy shapes with rippling hair
That shaded eyes of dreamy calm,
Formed and dissolved into the air
Which laved my brow with waves of balm.

Dusk arms upreaching from the sea,
And shadow-faces, seen and gone,
Toward an isle did beckon me,
Beyond the farthest gates of dawn.

We drew towards that lonely shore,
With still and measured motion slow,
I saw the hills lift evermore
Their massive foreheads crowned with snow,
And underneath, like moonlight fair,
I saw a hundred fathoms deep,
The crystal columns light as air
That undergird the Isle of Sleep.

And spire and dome and architrave,
And pictured window's rainbow gleams
Upshone from out the charmed wave,
Afloat upon a sea of dreams.
The sea-moss wove her braided locks
Along the beach in chains afar,
And lilies smiled among the rocks,
Peerless and perfect as a star.

A wood of asphodel below
Uprose as still and sweet as death,
And gliding shapes moved to and fro,--
I watched them with suspended breath.

Lost loved ones met and clasped me here;
I looked into their eyes serene,
They spake to me, and I did hear
As I were walking in a dream.

But even then a wind arose
That swept the morning mists away,
And showed, unfolding like a rose,
The bright flower of the perfect day:
And fading--faded like a cloud,
The hands I clasped, like wreaths of smoke,
While chanticleer crowed shrill and loud,
And wan and 'wildered I awoke.

THE BATTLE AUTUMN OF 1862.

Under the orchard boughs,
That drop red leaves like coals into the grass.
The golden arrows of the sunset fall;
And on the vine-hung wall
Great purple clusters in delicious drowse,
Beakers of chrysolite and amethyst,
Yet by the sun unkissed,
Lean down to all the wooing lips that pass,
Brimful of red, red wine
Sweet as brown peasants glean along the castled Rhine

All sights and sounds are of the Autumn weather;
The urchin rocking in the trees
Shakes silver laughter with the apples down,--
And wading to the knees
Among the stubble and the husks so brown,
The oxen keeping every patient step together,
Bring in the creaking wain,
High-piled with yellow maize and sheaves of rustling grain.

While in the mill, with ceaseless whirr and drone,
With moss and lichens to the roof o'ergrown
An undertone to every other sound,
The blind old horse goes round

Gathered along the farm-house eaves
In noisy congress, see the swallows sit,
Or whirling in mid air like autumn leaves,
In airy wheels they flit.
Bright rovers of all summer skies,
I follow them with wistful eyes
To-morrow's sunset they will be
A thousand leagues by land and sea
Beyond this wintry hemisphere
Heaven gathers round their joyous wings
The sunlight of perpetual springs,
Soft airs and fragrant blossomings
Through all the glad round year.

I hear as though I did not hear,
Along the upland fields remote,
The plough-boy's whistle, silver clear:
For hark the herds-man's graver note,
Who hums beneath the orchard boughs,
The ballad of that grand old man,
Who marshalled freedom's battle van,
And fell,--no laurel round his brows.

To-day the hero-martyr's grave
Is shaken by the armed tread
Of patriotic soldiers o'er his head
Not by the footsteps of one slave!

So grows the work that he began,
Wrought out in slow and toilsome ways,
Yet ever building through the days,
A grander heritage for man.

Oh! harvest years, foretold so long!
Through seas of blood, through years of wrong,
A people patient brave and strong,
In camp and field, and battle clang,
'Mid cannon's roar and trumpet's peal,
And shock of war, and clash of steel,
For you each steadfast blade out-sprang!
In you each loyal heart kept faith
As strong as life, as stern as death;
Though human lives like summer grain
Were sown on every battle-plain;
Blood of our bravest and our best,
The red, red wine of life was pressed,
And lost like summer rain.
In dust and smoke of carnage whirled,
Before those dying eyes still swam
Those coming years so grand and calm,
The golden Autumns of the world!

Through frost and snow and wintry rains,
Speed, silent hours!--the Nation waits,
While at her feet the slave in chains,
Kneels, listening for the coming fates;
And round him droops in soil and dust,
The bright flag of her stripes and stars:
Speed, Autumn hours!--we wait in trust
No tale of traitor lips can dim,
Till Liberty's white hand unbars
The broad gates of the glad New Year,
Unfurls our banner free and clear,
And ushers Peace and Freedom in!

[Footnote: President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation
took effect on the first day of the New Year, 1863.]

IN WAR TIME.

Into the west the day goes down,
Smiling and fading into the night,
Is it a cross, or is it a crown
I have worn through all these hours of light!

Bending over my milk-white curds,
In my dairy under the beech,
Still the thought of my heart took words,
And murmured itself in musical speech.

And all my pans of golden cream,
Set in a silver shining row,
Swam in my eyes like the shimmer and sheen
Of arms and banners, and martial show.

The bee in his gold laced uniform,
Drilled the ranks of clover blooms,
And carried my very heart by storm,
Mocking the roll of the distant drums.

But something choked my singing down,
Deeper than any song expressed.--
Is it a cross, or is it a crown
On my brow invisibly pressed!

Out of the east the star-watch shines,
Lighting their camp-fires in the gray;
I count their white tents' lengthening lines,
And think of those who are far away.

Where the yellow globes of the orange grow
In the southern fields-that slope to the sun,--
Oh say, have my brothers met the foe,--
Has another Shiloh been lost or won?

For when the moonlight falls across
The threshold of our cottage door.
My heart is full of a sense of loss,
As if they would return no more.

Last year when the April days were fair,
And the harvest fields were ploughed and sown,
Two stalwart boys took each his share,
But now our father toils alone.

And often at our evening prayers,
With an absence I can understand,
I see him look at the vacant chairs,
And wipe his brow with his wrinkled hand.

And therefore at the fireside nook,
Kneeling sadly at night to pray,
All the light of the holy book
Seems to fall and point one way.

And therefore tending my milk-white curds,
Still the song that my fancy hums,
Catches the glitter of martial words,
And sets itself to the beat of drums.

CHRISTMAS HYMN.

Break over the waiting hill-tops,
White dawn of the Christmas morn!
For the angels have sung through the midnight,
That the wonderful Babe is born.

And still in the slumbering valleys,
The night's black tents are up,
And the young moon stands on the mountains,
Clear and fair as a silver cup.

Under the cottage rafters,
Silent and soft and deep,
On the swart low brow of the toiler,
Settles the dew of sleep.

And some that watch and waken,
Are dreaming of eyes whose ray
Was long ago quenched and hidden
Under the shroud away.

Oh, sing thy jubilant anthem
Over the frozen mould,
And tell that wonderful story
Again, that never grows old!

For under the year's broad shadow,
Along the upward way,
Our footsteps often falter,
And often wander astray.

Weary and weak and erring,
In sorrow and doubt and tears,
Shine through the mist and the darkness
Star of a thousand years!

Awhile from the dusty marches
Of life let us find release,
And pitch our tents in the shadow
Of the white-walled City of Peace,

Let us hear through the blessed starlight.
The angels of Bethlehem,
Singing Glory to God in the highest,
On earth good will to men.

White dawn of the Christmas morning,
Through the snow-wreaths shining pale.
Let the joy-bells ring through the valleys,
Hail to thy coming--hail!

TE DEUM LAUDAMUS

Along the floors of heaven the music rolls,
Fills the vast dome, and lifts our fainting souls:
Praise God! Oh praise Him all created things,
Praise Him, the Lord of lords, the King of kings

Slow pulses coursing darkly underground,
Leap up in leaf and blossom at the sound,
Shake out glad pennons in remotest ways,
And with a thousand voices utter praise.

Along the southern hills the verdure creeps,
And faint green foliage clothes the craggy steeps,
Where in the sunshine lie reposing herds.
Whose gladness has no need of spoken words.

In the deep woods there is a voice, which saith
"The Lord is risen--there shall be no more death!
Listen, Oh Man! and thy dull ears shall hear
The Easter Anthem of the awakened year."

Past isles of emerald moss the brooklet flows
Melodious, and rejoicing as it goes;
Past drooping ferns, and through the mazy whir
Of insect wings of gold and gossamer.

Praise God!--they whisper softly each to each;
Waves have a voice, and trees and stones a speech;
Day unto day the chant of birds and breeze,
And man alone is dumb, nor hears, nor sees.

A NOVEMBER WOOD-WALK.

Dead leaves are deep in all our forest walks;
Their brightest tints not all extinguished yet,
Shine redly glimmering through the dewy wet;
And whereso'er thy musing foot is set,
The fragrant cool-wort lifts its emerald stalks.

How kindly nature wraps secure and warm,
In the fallen mantle of her summer pride,
These lovely tender things that peep and hide,
Whom unawares thy curious eye hath spied,
For the long night of winter's frost and storm.

Still keeps the deer-berry its vivid green,
Set in its glowing calyx like a gem;
While hung above, a marvellous diadem
Of tawny gold, the bittersweet's gray stem,
Strung with its globes of murky flame is seen.

The foot sinks ankle-deep in velvet moss,
The shroud of some dead giant of his race;
Dun gold and green and brown thick interlace,
Their tiny exquisite leaves in cunning trace,
Weaving their beaded filaments across.

Here mayest thou lie, and looking up, behold
Far up the stately trees sway to and fro
In the deep sunny air, with motion slow,
And whispering to each other weird and low,
The secrets of the haunted cloud-land old

Heaven seems not half so far as in the town,--
Looking through smoke and dust and tears to gain
Some heavenly comfort for thy human pain,
Heaven seems far off, but here the dews and rain
Come like a benediction from the Father down.

Nor will He who forgets not any weed
That blooms its little life in forest shade,
And dies when it hath cast its ripened seed,
Forget the human creatures He has made,
Frail as they are, and full of infinite need.

Now like a sheaf of golden arrows fall
The last rays of the Indian Summer sun;
And hark along the hollow hills they run,
Invisible messengers, the battle-call
Of coming storms, in pipings faint and small
They bring:--the pageant of the year is done.

RESIGNATION.

If Thou who seest this heart of mine
To earthly idols prone,
Should'st all those clinging cords untwine,
And take again Thy own,--
Help me to lay my hands in thine,
And say Thy will be done!

But Oh, when Thou dost claim the gift
Which Thou did'st only lend,
And leav'st my life of love bereft,
And lonely to the end,--
Oh Saviour! be Thyself but left,
My best beloved Friend!

And still the chastening hand I bless,
Which doth my steps uphold
Along earth's thorny wilderness,
Back to the Father's fold,
Where I Thy face in righteousness
Shall evermore behold.

EUTHANASIA

"O Life, O Beyond,
Thou art strange, thou art sweet!"
--_Mrs. Browning._

Dread phantom, with pale finger on thy lips,
Who dost unclose the awful doors for each,
That ope but once, and are unclosed no more,
Turn the key gently in the mystic ward,
And silently unloose the silver cord;
Lay thy chill seal of silence upon speech,
And mutely beckon through the soundless door
To endless night, and silence and eclipse.

Even now the soul unfettered may explore
On its swift wing beyond the gates of morn,
(Unravelled all the weary round of years)
And stand, unfenced of time and crowding space,
With love's fond instinct in that primal place,
The distant northern isle where she was born;
She sees the bay, the waves' deep voice she hears,
And babbles of the forms that are no more.

They are the dead, long laid in foreign graves,
One with his sword upon his loyal breast,
And one in tropic lands beneath the palm;
The sea rolls dark between those hemispheres,
And all the long procession of the years,
Since last those warm young hands she fondly pressed,
And heard through mute farewells the funeral psalm,
The "nevermore" of the dividing waves.

The record of a life is writ between;
The new world's story supplements the old;
The heathery hills, the rapture of the morn,
The fishers' huts, the chieftain's castle gray,
And the smooth crescent of the land-locked bay,--
These, the long hunger of the heart outworn,
New scenes replace, and the once strange and cold,
Become like those kept in the memory green.

But thou hast found already that dread place,
And thy lost loved ones in that unknown goal,
Ere thou hast quite put off the scrip and shell,
And gathered up thy feet into the bed,
And closed thine eyes, the last prayers being said,
Thy lips move dumbly, thy delaying soul
Passes in salutation, not farewell,
To join the heroes of thine ancient race.

Unoutlined shadow, angel of release,
Whose cool hand stills the fever in the veins,
And all the tumult of life's crowding cares--
Ambition, envy, love and fear and hate,
Hope's eager prophecies fulfilled too late,
And fierce desires, and sorrows, and despairs--
Thou wav'st thy mystic wand, and there remain
Sleep and forgetfulness, and utter peace.

Why should we fear thy shadow at the door,
Oh thou mysterious Death?--art thou not sweet
To the worn pilgrim of life's toilsome day,
Who com'st at evening time, and show'st instead
Of pilgrim tent, and pilgrim pallet spread,
The doors of that vast caravansera
Where all the pilgrims of the ages meet,
And rest together, and return no more?

BALLAD OF THE MAD LADYE.

The rowan tree grows by the tower foot,
(_Flotsam and jetsam from over the sea,
Can the dead feel joy or pain?_)
And the owls in the ivy blink and hoot,
And the sea-waves bubble around its root,
Where kelp and tangle and sea-shells be,
When the bat in the dark flies silently.
(_Hark to the wind and the rain._)

The ladye sits in the turret alone,
(_Flotsam and jetsam from over the sea,
The dead--can they complain?_)
And her long hair down to her knee has grown,
And her hand is cold as a hand of stone,
And wan as a band of flesh may be,
While the bird in the bower sings merrily.
(_Hark to the wind and the rain._)

Sadly she leans by her casement side
(_Flotsam and jetsam from over the sea,
Can the dead arise again?_)
And watcheth the ebbing and flowing tide,
But her eye is dim, and the sea is wide;
The fisherman's sail and the cloud flies free
And the bird is mute in the rowan tree.
(_Hark to the wind and the rain._)

The moon shone in on the turret stair
(_Flotsam and jetsam from over the sea,
The dead are bound with a chain._)
And touched her cheek and brightened her hair,
And found naught else in the world so fair,
So ghostly fair as the mad ladye,
While the bird in the bower sang lonesomely.
(_Hark to the wind and the rain._)

The weary days and the months crept on,
(_Flotsam and jetsam from over the sea,
The words of the dead are vain_)
At last the summer was over and gone,
And still she sat in her turret alone,
Her white hands clasping about her knee,
And the bird was mute in the rowan tree.
(_Hark to the wind and the rain._)

Wild was the sound of the wind and the sleet,
(_Flotsam and jetsam from over the sea.
The dead--do they walk again?_)
Wilder the roar of the surf that beat;
Whose was the form that it bore to her feet
Swayed with the swell of the unquiet sea,
While the raven croaked in the rowan tree.
(_Hark to the wind and the rain._)

Oh Lady, strange is the silent guest--
(_Flotsam and jetsam cast up by the sea,
Can the dead feel sorrow or pain?_)
With the sea-drenched locks and the pulseless breast
And the close-shut lips which thine have pressed
And the wide sad eyes that heed not thee,
While the raven croaks in the rowan tree.
(_Hark to the wind and the rain._)

The tower is dark, and the doors are wide,
(_Flotsam and jetsam cast up by the sea,
The dead are at peace again._)
Into the harbour the fisher boats ride,
But two went out with the ebbing tide,
Without sail, without oar, full fast and free,
And the raven croaks in the rowan tree.
(_Hark to the wind and the rain._)

THE COMING OF THE KING.

"O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted, behold,
I will lay thy stones with fair colours, and lay thy foundations
with sapphires. And I will make thy windows of agates, and thy
gates of carbuncles, and all thy borders of pleasant stones. And
all thy children shall be taught of the Lord; and great shall be
the peace of thy children." Isaiah, liv. 11-13.

As the sand of the desert is smitten
By hoof-beats that strike out a light,
A flash by which dumb things are litten,
The children of night;
So Thou who of old did'st create us,
Among the high gods the Most High,
Strike us with Thy brightness, and let us
Behold Thee, and die.

Grown old in blind anguish and travail,
Thy world thou mad'st sinless and free
Gropes on, with no power to unravel
The clue back to Thee:
Since his feet from Thy ways torn and bleeding
The long march of ages began,
And the gates of Thy sword-guarded Eden
Were closed upon man.