Chapter IV

The hills, that Morning’s footsteps wake;
The waves that take
A brightness from the Eve; the woods,
The solitudes, o’er which Night broods,
Their Spirits have, whose parts are one
With his, whose mortal part is done.
Whose part is done; alas! is done.

AT LAST

What shall be said to him,
Now he is dead?
Now that his eyes are dim,
Low lies his head?
What shall be said to him,
Now he is dead?

One thing, he knew not of,
Sweet, in his ear
Whisper with all thy love--
Haply he’ll hear.
One thing, he knew not of,
Sweet, in his ear.

What shall be given him,
Now he is dead?
Now that his eyes are dim,
Low lies his head?
What shall be given him,
Now he is dead?

That which was long denied
Here, Sweet,--thy heart
Lay now his heart beside,
Never to part.
That which was long denied
Here, Sweet,--thy heart.

REMEMBERED

Here in the dusk I picture it again,
Her face, as ’twas before she fell asleep:
Renunciation glorifying pain
Of her soul’s inmost deep.

I shall not see its like again! the brow
Of marble, that the fair hair aureoled,--
Like some pale lily in the afterglow,--
With supernatural gold.

As if a rose should speak and, somehow heard
Thro’ some strange sense, the unembodied sound
Grow visible, her mouth was as a word
A sweet thought falters round.

So do I still remember eyes imbued
With far reflections--as the stars suggest
The silence, purity, and solitude
Of infinite peace and rest.

She was my all. I loved her as men love
A high desire, religion, an ideal--
The meaning purpose in the loss whereof
God shall alone reveal.

MONOCHROMES

I

The last rose falls, wrecked of the wind and rain;
Where once it bloomed the thorns alone remain:
Dead in the wet the slow rain strews the rose.
The day was dim; now eve comes on again,
Grave as a life weighed down with many woes:
So is the joy dead, and alive the pain.

The brown leaf flutters where the green leaf died;
Bare are the boughs, and bleak the forest side:
The wind is whirling with the last wild leaf.
The eve was strange; now dusk comes weird and wide,
Gaunt as a life that lives alone with grief:
So hope is gone, and doubt and loss abide.

An empty nest hangs where the wood-bird pled;
Along the west the dusk dies, stormy red:
The frost falls, subtle as a serpent’s breath.
The dusk was sad; now night is overhead,
Grim as a life brought face to face with death:
So life lives on when love, its life, lies dead.