Chapter IV

Now all the world’s December,
And night is all alarm,
Above the last dim ember
Age bends to keep him warm;
Now all of life’s December,
And clouds are driven storm.

THE LIGHT AND LARK

Hangs, stormed with stars, the night,
Deep over deep;
Each star a point of light
In God’s high keep.

In God’s?--Perhaps.--Of such
We can not tell,
Who shrink--and is it much?--
To say farewell.

_There_ ’tis the dawn and lark:
_Here_ ’tis the wail,
Sobbed through the ceaseless dark,
O’ the nightingale.

But what were all this worth
To thee or me,
Were there not, after earth,
Eternity?

God gives us life to keep.--
And what hath life?--
Love, faith, and care, and sleep,
Where dreams are rife.

Death’s sleep! whose shadows start
The tears in eyes
Of Love, who breaks his heart,
Despairs and dies.

And faith is never given
Without some care,
Perhaps that leads to Heaven
By ways of prayer.

The nightingale and dark
He gives us here:--
Oh, for the light and lark
Eternal there!

THE JESSAMINE AND THE MORNING-GLORY

I

With his herald torch in the van of day
The star of the morning smiled;
And the streaks in the east were rosy gray,
And the earth lay undefiled,
When a morning-glory’s spiral bud,
As pink as a shell and slim,
Unbound the sark of her maidenhood,
And flashed on the dawning dim:
Royal she seemed, to the purple born,
And vain of her beauty and proud to scorn.

II

And she shook her locks at the morning-star,
And her raiment fluttered wide;
Then smiled above at his scimitar,
And gazed around in pride:
The pomegranate near, with its crown of flame,
And the gemmed geraniums nigh,
All bowed their heads at her whispered name,
As she throned herself on high;
While the fuchsia, under her silvery hood,
Shrunk with a face like a bead of blood.

III

All knew that this child of the morning light
Was queen of the morn and them;
That the morning-star, in his beams of white,
Was her prince in a diadem:
’Twas he who had given those gems that flash
And jewel the front of her smock;
From his lordly fingers of light did dash
Down pearls where she stooped to mock
A jessamine, pale, in the garden’s gloom,
All wan of face, but of sweet perfume.

IV

And the morning-glory, in pride of birth,
From the jessamine turned in scorn:
“I marvel,” she said, “if thy mother earth
Was not sick when thou wast born!
Thou art pale as an infant an hour dead--
Wan thing, dost weary our eye!”
And she weakly laughed and stiffened her head
And turned to her star in the sky.
And the jessamine sighed, as she bent her head,
“I am sick of myself, and I would I were dead!”