“FALSE WOMANKIND!”
ON READING A SLUR THAT WAS MADE ON HER BY THE LACK-LOVE GAY, OF QUEEN
ANNE’S DAY.
“False womankind, false womankind!”
Thus wails and rails a many a blind
And foolish heart, too long confined
Where light and love have never shined.
E’en sweetest Shakespeare’s pen, embrined
With biting bitterness of mind,
“As false as woman’s love,” has whined.
—Unkind the cut, the heart unkind.
“False womankind, false womankind!”—
I hurl the lie back from my mind
To those who thus a wreath have twined
Of roseless thorns to crown and bind
A sister’s crown, or mother’s kind
And sainted brow;—or twine and wind
It, thorns and all, round heart and mind
Of sweetheart-wife in love enshrined.
False, false the charge and false the mind
That ever says “False womankind!”
For the pæan ages wind
Unto me this truth they find
In the heart of humankind,
In the human heart enshrined:—
“None so false and none so blind
As whose loveless pens have lined
“What the heart has undermined,
‘False womankind, false womankind!’
None so true as her we find:
None so pure of heart and mind,
None so sweet and so refined,
None so great and good and kind,
None so in the heart enshrined
As womankind, as womankind!”
LONELY!
TO —— (LONG AGO DEAD.)
I am lonelier, lonelier, Dear, to-day
Than ever I’ve been before:
And the restless old ocean, foam-fretted alway,
Moans only of days of yore.
But somehow my heart is so sad in life’s whirl,
And my life is so shut in its shell,
Tho’ it heal every wound o’er with purest of pearl
Of naught but the sea will it tell.
Oh, lonely and lorn as the bittern’s boom,
I haunt every solitude known,
Only to find from the wide world’s room
A nameless something has flown.
I know not the reason, and fear nor I care;
I only know I am lonelier, Dear,
As over the well-wonted moorland I fare,
Than ever the death-wept tear.
How lonely, Dear! how long the time!—
But I’ll bear it, I’ll bear it for thee,
That at last I may join in the glad-voiced chime
Far out on the crystal sea.
I’SE SEEN A LIGHT IN DE SKY.
(A PLANTATION MELODY.)
Oh I’se gittin’ ol’ an’ grizzled,
An’ I haint got long to stay;
My head hab got to noddin’
An’ I haint right well noway.
Oh I’se gwine, gwine to leab you,
An’ doan’ you chillun cry;
Oh I know I’se gwine to leab you
Caze I’se seen a light in de sky!
Chorus.
Oh yes! in de white clouds floatin’ high,
Oh yes! caze I’se seen a light in de sky!
Oh I,—
Oh I’se seen—
I’se seen a light,—
I’se seen a light in de sky!
Oh I’se gwine away to leab you,
An’ doan’ you chillun cry!
Oh I know I’se gwine to leab you
Caze I’se seen a light in de sky!
Oh dat light am a-gittin’ brightah,
An’ de cloud am a-comin’ nigh,—
Oh I know hits de angels comin’
Fer to carry me home on high.
Oh dese eyes dey’ll nebber see you,—
Hoh my chillun doan’ you cry!—
Twell dey wake in de happy mawnin,
Caze I’se seen a light in de sky!
Chorus.
Oh yes! in de white clouds floatin’ high,
Oh yes! caze I’se seen a light in de sky!
Oh I,—
Oh I’se seen—
I’se seen a light,—
I’se seen a light in de sky!
Oh I’se gwine away to leab you,
An’ doan’ you chillun cry!
Oh I know I’se gwine to leab you
Caze I’se seen a light in de sky!
Oh good-bye to de ol’ plantation,
De mawnin’ am growin’ gray!—
Oh good-bye, an’ stop yo’ weepin’,—
De mawnin’ am breakin’ Day!
Oh yes! in de heaben dat’s comin’
I’ll meet you by-an’-by!—
Hoh yes! in de happy mawnin’,
Caze you’ll see de Light in de sky!
Chorus.
Oh yes! in de white clouds floatin’ high!
Oh yes! caze you’ll see de Light in de sky!
Oh I,—
Oh I’se seen—
I’se seen a light,—
I’se seen a light in de sky!
Oh I’se gwine, gwine to leab you,
But I’ll meet you by-an’-by!
Oh I know I’se gwine to meet you,
Caze I’se seen a light in de sky.
FAMILY OF THE EPHEMERA.
(To be read in connection with the following poem, “Shut In.”)
Somewhere, sometime, I know not when or where, I have heard a strangely
beautiful and beautifully strange and altogether wonderful story—a
story of a pygmy people.
In the long, long ago that has slipped into the lethal tide of the flow
of Time where even the years have forgotten the rolling chime that
they used to sing to the shore of a heavenly clime (and where poets
don’t ever, nor ever, nor ever rhyme), whence even Tradition, asleep,
forgets to climb, so long ago that I don’t know but that the time still
antedates all dates, there lived the Family of the Ephemera.
As the sun came up in the morning, the race came into existence.
During the night, a toad-stool of wonderful dimensions had sprung up,
and beneath this over-shadowing phenomenon, built by the genii of
darkness, the first glint of the new day’s sun kissed the first born of
a new race—the Adam and Eve of the Family called Ephemera.
As the sun arose, and ere, e’en years ere it showed its lower disk,
the family increased most startingly. The whole of their known world
was peopled. They developed the resources of their vast little land.
They cultivated the soil. They delved in the mines for gold. They
carried on commerce with their widely scattered selves. They built
homes and cities. Their cities were magnificent, their houses built of
exquisitely carved and polished stone quarried from a grain of sand.
Each window was made of the filmy iridescence of a single sunbeam, and
curtained with richly embroidered tapestries woven from threads of the
delicate shadow cast by a single ray of spectral purple. Their tables
were filled with all the rich and dainty micros of the land. Withal,
they were a happy, though barbarous people.
The sun arose. Men of the present generation had already grown
gray-headed, while myriads of their posterity were just starting on
their paths. Generation after generation had already come and gone,
each leaving the wealth of its history, its experience, its scientific
researches, its learning to the inheritants of the next.
Centuries to them came and went, governments grew old, decayed, and
passed into tradition, while others sprang up in their places;—for to
this strange and fast-living people, our moments were days, our seconds
were months, our minutes were years, our hours were centuries, and our
days were ages untold that lap the two ends of time into one unbroken
eternity.
The sun was mid-forenoon. The Family of the Ephemera had grown old
and wise. They pointed with vaunting pride to their intelligence and
prosperity, to their grand achievements reaching down the long,
fretted colonnades of history and vanishing in the dim perspective of
tradition’s mystery. They looked upon all around, beneath, and above
them, and rejoiced that all was for them. Their wise philosophers
pointed to the sun and said, “All for us!” They told and taught how
that great sun had always remained in its present place; for even in
the memory of the oldest inhabitants no one had ever known the sun to
be in other place than now. Nay, even history knew it not. They said,
however, that there was a tradition, but not authenticated by history
nor by later scientific investigation, that the sun long, long æons ago
had occupied a position nearer the horizon. They showed how and why
all things were made for them; how the great toad-stool, towering an
immeasurable distance above them, had been placed on earth for them,
and them alone, and philosophized how it was impossible for another
to exist in the universe. They rejoiced that their little world was
created, and endowed with all its richest blessings, for none other
than them. They were a happy people, and prosperous. Their want of
wisdom made them more happy and more prosperous.
Centuries came and went. The sun stood in the zenith. So stood the
race of Ephemera. Wiser philosophers than those of the mid-forenoon
of their existence still pointed toward the great red sun, and said,
“It was always there; it was made for us!” Crowns crumbled. New
nations arose as from chaos, flourished, and died. Others took their
places. Schools had always been tolerated. They were now fostered. They
pointed their telescopes toward the mighty fret-work of the toad-stool
above them, and computed the number of huge radial beams that supported
its broad outer rim. The students of the universities and colleges
delved deep into the lore of their ancestral nations. They studied
history; they read their poets; they reasoned and computed with their
mathematicians; they looked down into the earth and up into the heavens
with their philosophers, and, withdrawing to their own narrow cells,
they said, “All for us, all for us!”
The sun passed the zenith, declining to the west. The race declined!
Still, philosophers said, pointing to the sun, “’Twas alway thus; ’twas
made for us!”
They said Time was for them, and them alone. They could not conceive
another similar or a different people. With prophecy, they looked into
the future. They claimed that, also: for a hope and a faith, placed
in their hearts at their creation, had grown and strengthened, that
they should all meet again in another world, a brighter and a better
world, all for them, all for them. The gods, with whom they peopled all
things, watched over and guarded them, and them alone.
The sun sank low. The lower limb touched the horizon. With the going
down of the sun, the race decayed in its old age. As the last ray of
sun passed over the land of the Ephemera, only two of this strange
Family, wandering hand in hand, old and lone, turned their eyes to the
waning light of the west, and sank to rest as the ray shot up and out
into the unfathomed sky beyond, and glinted its gold on the clinking
stars, the beautiful golden gates of the sable and iron-bound night!
Thus passed away the Family of the Ephemera. Strange, strange story!
A race wrapped up in themselves, never dreaming that there might be
innumerable other realms like their little own; that there might be
peoples on peoples beyond their ken in worlds unknown as superior to
them as the gods of Olympus were superior to the Romans.
A strange, strange story!—for we are looking through an inverted
microscope, the large end at the eye, and the small end turned upon
Time, Events, and the Human race!
SHUT IN.
I.
Oh the narrowness man has been born to descry in,
Where the convex surface of every eye,
Even unto the night of the day we shall die in,
Still perfectly fits in the concave sky!
II.
I wonder sometimes if the star-illusions
We see at first glance in the infinite sky,
Are not the suggestions, the far-intrusions,
Of systems on systems beyond the eye.
I wonder if ever the thought may confound them
Who inhabit a silvery orb of mist,
Seeing myriads of silvery others around them,
That myriads on myriads more may exist.
Oh say, do the sprites of each tiny frost-crystal
That burns with the pent-up fire of suns
Ever dream or imagine the same holy vestal
Is burning in myriads of similar ones?
Do the spirits that dwell in the dust of a sun-beam,
As each in its course like a planet whirls,
Ever know they are bathed in the light of but one beam
From the sun of but one mighty system of worlds?
III.
Oh the narrowness man has been born to descry in,
And the infinite bounds of his hopes and desires!
Even unto the night of the day he shall die in
Aspiring and falling he still aspires.
But I know in my heart that in worlds elysian
The convex surface of every eye,
With a perfected soul and an infinite vision,
Will range o’er a perfected, infinite sky.
IV.
For I dreamed a dream, in the midnight quiet,
Of a golden day in a happy time;
And my thoughts leaped up at the dream-god’s fiat
And sang in my heart this golden chime:—
O rise thou my soul, look beyond thy dark prison,
The warder is shifting the mortal bars;
An infinite sun in the east has arisen,
There’s an infinite system beyond the stars.
SONG OF THE STARS.
I dreamed one night when the golden stars,
Like an eastern maid o’er her soft kanoon,
Leaned out of their skyey bowers above
And sang in sweet measures an olden tune.
I dreamed the sweetest of dreams that night;—
And the portals of heaven seemed opening wide
As the music grew sweeter and nearer each note
And rose and fell like the swell of the tide.
Ah the beautiful, beautiful stars of that night,
And the beautiful music they left in my heart
Shall brighten and brighten forever and aye
And never forever my soul shall depart.
At the soft dream-touch of the finger-tips
On the harps of air by the heavenly throng,
The deep silence merged into soft music-waves,
And I heard in my heart this beautiful song:—
Dream, dream,
Youth and maiden,
Beam, beam,
Stars love-laden.—
We are the beautiful portals of love,
Beautiful, beautiful portals above
Whence all the glories of heaven shine:
Turn your eyes, turn, turn, turn your eyes,
Turn them to the happy skies
And drink with them sweet love divine.
Dream, dream,
Youth and maiden,
Beam, beam,
Stars love-laden.—
Youth, in the depths of thy soul do thou pray,
Pray for thy guidance in Love’s lighted way,
Kneeling at radiant Love’s holy shrine:
Turn thine eyes, turn, turn, turn thine eyes,
Turn them to the happy skies
And drink with them sweet love divine.
Dream, dream,
Youth and maiden,
Beam, beam,
Stars love-laden.—
Maiden, still not the sweet throbs of thy heart,—
Throbs his caresses and words sweetly start,—
When he is hoping and longing for thine:
Turn thine eyes, turn, turn, turn thine eyes,
Turn them to the happy skies
And drink with them sweet love divine.
Dream, dream,
Youth and maiden,
Beam, beam,
Stars love-laden.—
Youth, seek the heart of the one at thy side
And into thy sky shall a bright vision glide,—
A star that shall ever for thee alone shine:
Turn thine eyes, turn, turn, turn thine eyes,
Turn them to the happy skies
And drink with them sweet love divine.
I woke from the dream at the tide of the morn,
And beheld the sweet vision that filled my dreams.—
That vision, My Star, thro’ a long, happy life
Is guiding my steps with its golden beams.
No longer, no longer a vision or dream,
I clasp My Sweet Love to my heart all my own;—
But still I can hear the sweet music that fell
From the stars that night on our hearts alone.
I WONDER.
I wonder sometimes if ever
The music God has sent
Will get into my heart and stay there
As I think he surely meant.
Can the voice of Laughter enter
The form where Death has been?—
Whence the spirit of Love has departed,
Can Music’s charms come in?
There’s an ache in my heart that daily
Goes out in earnest quest
Of the spirit of Love that has left me
In the sadness of unrest.
Oh, I wonder sometimes if ever
That spirit of Love will return,
And rekindle my heart’s dead ashes,—
Inspirit the dust of the urn.
I fear that the spirit would enter
The ashes in ghostly quest,
And set but the bones into motion,
The ghost of Love at the best.
Are the rivers, I wonder, ever
Brought back by the clouds from the sea
To flow in the same old channels
Over the dregs and debris?
The love of my heart has departed—
The river has run to the sea;—
And I wonder sometimes if its waters
Will ever come back to me.
Lo, there in my heart’s dead channels
Lie the stagnant pools of Time;
And I see the debris at the bottom,
The dregs and the rotting slime.
I wonder if ever the rivers,
The rivers that run to the sea,
Flow just as sweet on returning
Over the dregs and debris?
Somehow, a thought in my spirit
Comes up from the stagnant fen
That the music of Heaven shall never
Be heard in its waters again!
Yet I wonder each day as I wander
Along where the stream used to be
If the waters won’t sometime come back there
And dredge out the dregs and debris.
It may be! ’Tis a long time coming,—
Too long, I fear,—too long!—
For Love’s River must sing its music
In hearts that have never gone wrong.
Oh, will the Waters returning,
Borne by the Clouds from the Sea,
Run just as sweetly as ever
Over the Dregs and Debris?
IF SO, PEACE TILL NEXT NEW-YEAR.
(A DIRGE.)
The New Year!—hark! the bell!—oh it
Is at last here!
A solemn hush! The world sits still
With breath abated as the poet
Of the New Year
Takes an anti-bilious pill!
MY DEFEAT.
Sweeter than any sung
My songs that found no tongue.
Whittier: My Triumph.
In the universe swept by the eyes of my soul,
Swim a myriad luminous stars and suns;
And swift through my brains burning æther they roll
Like the infinite trains of the heavenly ones.
In my dreams I outstretch my vain arms with delight
For the forms of the angels that sing round my bed;
But alas! for the chorus of seraphs take flight
And beckon me whither but angels may tread.
And I muse with my heart when my mind sits a-dream
While vibrations of light from the heavenly cars
Fleet swift thro’ the arms of my soul in bright gleam,
And leave me upreaching for aye tow’rd the stars.
THERE’S A LAUGH.
There’s the laugh of the fiend that shrivels the heart,
That burns out the eyes from their sockets of fire,
That crackles the skin and parches the breath
And bellows and shrieks with demoniac ire.
There’s the laugh of the hobgoblin, demon of night,
That frightens the children to silence their sobs,
That rings in their ears to the end of life,
And at night in their hearts like the death-watch throbs.
There’s the wild, screeching laugh from the madman’s lips
When his eyes wildly start from his reechy brain,
That haunts us, tho’ try to forget as we will,
And pierces the heart with a dagger of pain.
There’s the unearthly laugh and the sickening leer
Of the idiot—wretched Unfortunate! dead
Before born, the live sepulchre of unknown crimes,
The tomb of the lives generations have led!
There’s the blasting, blistering, withering laugh
That blights e’en the heart wherein it is born,
That bubbles and sputters and hisses and spits
As it falls from the scorching lips of scorn.
There’s a strange, weird laugh, even tho’ from a child,
That gurgles and sticks in the sleeper’s thick breath,
That startles the shivering silence with awe
And dies in the throat like the rattle of death.
There’s a laugh, like the wind’s cracked whistle, that creaks
And squeaks on the worn-out pipes of old age;
And a sigh heaves up from the heart full sad,
For we know what the ominous sounds presage.
There’s the free, wild laugh that bounds as the deer—
As free as the leap of the hart and as wild—
’Tis the laugh that I love with my heart and my soul,
The sweet, wild laugh of an innocent child.
There’s the laugh that I love, the balm of tired hearts,
That quiets the fluttering temples of care;
’Tis the soft, soothing laugh from the sweet lips of Love,
And it falls like a blessing that answers prayer.
There’s the sweetest of laughs full of music divine
That gladdens the heart and the throbbing brain;
I would give—oh what would I not, were it mine,
But to hear the sweet laugh of my mother again.
TO SLEEP.
Soft on thy breast
Where the soul in oblivious quiet may dream
While it sweeps up to heaven on a star-born beam,
There would I rest,
So peacefully rest,
Oh rest,
Rest!—
Asleep on thy breast,
Asweep to the blest
In a dream
On the gleam
Of a star
In the cradle-rocked billows of azure afar.
WHEEL AND SHUTTLE.
Spin: God will send thee flax.—Proverb.
[Although differing slightly from his literal experience,
nevertheless to the boy, long ago grown to manhood, who used
to cling to his mother’s dress, and fretfully toddle back and
forth as she patiently sent the big wheel whirring and then
ran backwards with her lengthening thread, then forwards, and
so on, hour after hour, spinning threads for the home-loom,
this poem, with its application to life, has in it the
pleasing scent of the roses of recollection, intoxicating even
to sadness.]
“Spin, spin!”
The warp is in
And the shuttle never slacks:
Let thy fingers never rest,
Heed the weaver’s stern behest,
“Spin, spin!”
While the woof is weaving in,
God will send thee flax.
“Spin, spin!”
The wheels begin,
And the distaff never lacks:
Let thy spindle’s endless thrum
Fill the shuttles as they hum
“Spin, spin!”
While the woof is weaving in,
God will send thee flax.
“Spin, spin!”—
Thy fingers thin
Let the carded threads relax!
Lo! the wheel is standing dumb,
For the loom has ceased its grum
“Spin, spin!”—
Aye, the woof is woven in,
God has sent thee flax!
THE PRESS OF PENURY.
Out of the Press of Penury
The choicest wines have flowed
To rouse a nation’s blood
To statesmanship or poesy.
(Nor less to hearts the poet’s cause
Than statesman’s counseling:—
If but a people sing,
I care not who shall make the laws.)
With every cycling sun that slips
Through all its winding turns,
Some Lincoln or some Burns
Still lifts his spirit to our lips.
HALLOWEEN.
AN INVITATION SENT TO A LADY, OCT. 31.
I wad na gang alane to-night
An’ leave alane a lassie
Where pixies, elves, an’ goblins fight
An’ drink their bogie tassie.
Sae come wi’ me an’ gang awa’
Where oufe nor spook nor bogle
Hae ought o’ ill or guid to do
But flichter, blink, an’ ogle.
Oh we’ll be merry like the lave
Tho’ Halloween be eerie,
An’ crack an’ jauk an’ giddy ’have
Wi’ Mrs. C—— till weary.
LIFE.
What is life?—’Tis a delicate shell
Thrown up by Eternity’s flow
On Time’s bank of quicksand to dwel.
And a moment its loveliness show.
Gone back to the elements grand
Is the billow that cast it ashore:
See! another is washing the strand,
And the beautiful shell is no more!
—D. A.
What is life?—’Tis the billow of bells
That the sea of eternity bears;
And in rapturous music it swells
As it kisses the sands of the years.
But the ripples are breaking in foam,—
And the billow has ceased to be!
List! the billow, gone back to its home,
Is tolling down deep in the sea!
BORROWING BRAINS.
“Lend me your brains, lend me your brains,”
Screeched a highwayman goblin ’way down in his throat
As deep as he ever could dig up a note.
And his whole gang creaked and hoarsely screaked
Like a hinge that was rusty, and constantly shrieked
“Lend us your brains, lend us your brains,”
As they seized my mare’s head at the bit by the reins
And a long-haired loon with a razory spoon
Clipped open my scalp just over my crown,
And the skull the same place, running crosswise and down;
And they hinged the two pieces with screechy brass bands
Where they singed off my hair by the touch of their hands:
And oh the pains, the pains, the pains,
When they flapped down the cover just back o’ my brains.
My mother came by with a heart-rending cry,
And a wretch popped his eyes from the crown of his hat
As he squealed, “You’ll never again do that!”
And he sharpened his spoon on the sole of his shoon,
Did the long-beard lout by the liquidy moon;
And he severed her brain and her heart in twain
While the rest held me there in my helpless pain.
And the long-beard loons with their long-eared spoons
Stood up on the top of my topless crown
And then leaped to the depths of the hollow turned down.
Oh they teetered and twinged on the part that was hinged,
And they shrieked with delight till the very air cringed
As they sang in their glee how smart they would be
When they got all my brains in their noddles, you see.
And they reached their long spoons, the reechy old loons,
’Way into the cavity made in my head,
And scraped, and scraped till they thought I was dead.
Oh the pains, the pains, the terrible pains
When they spooned from my skull every speck of my brains,
Then with spoons for their pries dragged both of my eyes
Through that hole in my head of such terrible size.
Oh they thought they would be such poets, you see,
And such wonderful, marvelous scholars, you know,
When they planted my brains in their noddles to grow!
But my—oh—oh! what fools they were though!
For poets, you know, are like underdone dough—
And oh—my—oh! what fools they were though
When they planted my brains in their noddles to grow!
But they crammed every grain, their ill-gotten gain,
Clear down in the pokes of their pocket-like ears,
And turned over my eyes to their sages and seers.
But they soon rued they had the brains I had had
For they drove every one of them stark staring mad;
For the goblins, you see, went crazy, like me,
As mad as a March hare ever could be.
To my greatest surprise they brought back my eyes
And put them both back as they always had been.
Since Thought made them crazy, as each one had seen,
They restored me my brains with the greatest of pains,
And handed me back my mare’s bridle-reins;
Then away and up through the atmosphere flew
And left me as sound and as solid as new!
And there was no loon with a goblin spoon,
And there never has been and never will be.
Whether or not this happened to me,
It needn’t at all happen this way to all:
But whatever you do, or whatever befall,
Un-less the gob-lins get your night-mare’s reins,
Don’t ev-er nor ev-er go lend-ing your brains!
SLEEP.
Dear Nurse that foldeth weary Nature to
Thy heart, and from tired eyes shutteth out the light,
E’en as a mother at the fall of night
Doth take her child upon her lap to undo
The snarls and tangles of the day, and woo
Away the sun-bred ills, and balm the sight
With visions of another world all bright,
Dear soothing healing Sleep! ’tis thee I sue.
Come, fold your arms about my Sweetheart-Wife;
Balm up her eyes that stare at staring Night;
Seal down her lids with sweet, refreshing gleams,
Or visions, rather, of the happy life
We’ve planned together; and leave her not till the light
Of morn, with me, shall kiss her from her dreams.
TO A WILD-ROSE BOUQUET.
Wild roses down the lane
Sweet Laeda gave in June,
To glad me
And to sad me,
Like shine and mingled rain
Atween the clouds aboon.
SONG ON THE SEA.
Merrily, merrily over the wave
We’ll laugh and we’ll sing as we’re bounding along,
Merrily, merrily, joyous and brave
We’ll echo the music of waves in our song:—
Roll, roll, break, break,
Over the merrily musical waves,
Roll, roll, wake, wake
All the glad echoes that hide in their caves.
Rocking and rolling the sea is our home
And joyous we shout from our billow-rocked boat;
Cleaving the breakers white-feathered with foam
We’ll set the sweet echoes of ocean afloat:—
Roll, roll, break, break,
Over the merrily musical waves,
Roll, roll, wake,
All the glad echoes that hide in their caves.
Merrily, merrily out of their caves
We’ll call the glad echoes sweet laughing along;
Merrily, merrily out on the waves
We’ll mingle the musical sea with our song:—
Roll, roll, break, break,
Over the merrily musical waves,
Roll, roll, wake, wake
All the glad echoes that hide in their caves.
WOODLAND LAY.
Oh come to the woodland where joys reign supreme,
Where the zephyr’s soft kiss lightly touches the brow,
And the sun gently drops thro’ the leaves in a dream
And sleeps in the shade of the wide-spreading bough.
Let the world plod along with its stern, solemn face,
With its brow deeply wrinkled with thought and with care;
Let the pleasures of life to-day’s business replace
While we list to the charm of its wild, joyous air.
The murm’ring of brooks, the singing of birds,
The whisper of winds and the leaves soft reply,
The bleating of flocks and the lowing of herds,
The breathing of nature from earth to the sky—
All combine to make music with cadence as sweet
To the ear of the mortal, as the music of spheres,
Gentle wooed from the harp at Infinity’s feet
And as softly let fall on angelical ears.
Like the soft flakes of snow as they fall on the deep,
The rhythmical notes adown tremblingly go
On the listening air, and as silently sleep
In the ocean of joys, where they melt as the snow.
IN THE ANGELS’ KEEP.
Let me not look on the dear, dead face,
I would not remember her so;
For her eyes are closed, and her hands are still,
And her lips can’t speak, you know!
Let me remember her just as she lived,
And just as I’ll meet her above—
With eyes that could talk and a touch that could soothe,
And a heart that was full of love.
Let me remember her not as one dead,
But as one that has fallen asleep;
She will wake in the morning, I know, at my call,
Awake in the angels’ keep!
THOUGHT.
Thought alone is eternal.—Young.
’Tis the whisp’ring of angels, the brush of their wings;
’Tis the flight of a soul from its fetters of clay
To the lighthouse of gold where the seraph Hope sings
And flings out its notes on life’s billowed bay.
’Tis the touch of Christ’s hand that upraiseth the dead;
’Tis the breath breathed of God in the nostrils of man;—
The stream that shall rise from its mould-made bed
And join with the clouds whence in rain-drops it ran.
Tinged with sadness of mortals, it smells of the grave;
But the Childhood of Faith and the Mother of Hope,
It beckons to fields where the palm-groves wave
And the joy-studded gates of Jerusalem ope.
WHITE-ENTHRONED ABOVE ME.
(ON A SMALL WHITE-ROSE BOUQUET PRESENTED BY A LADY AND PLACED
IN PALGRAVE’S “GOLDEN TREASURY,” OPPOSITE “THE SLEEPING BEAUTY.”)
White roses, sweet white roses
Fair Leda smiles atween,
No soul your lily-light encloses
So pure as hers, I ween.
Here lie and dream, sweet, pure white roses
That blessed the heart of June,
And ope the budding love that closes
Around her soul aboon.
THE LONE WAYSIDE WILD ROSE.
I passed along a wilding lane
Where weeds and straying flowers grew,
Where clover-blooming meadows threw
Sweet love upon the winds in vain.
Lonely by the wayside wild
Where the earth all trodden lay,
There peeped a wild rose, one bright day,
And stretched its palms like a pleading child.
Day after day, day after day
It drank of love from heaven and earth
And lifted itself from a timid birth
To a beautiful soul in sweet array.
It breathed from out of its opening soul
The breath that heaven has given the rose,
The sweetest by far that mortal knows,
And drank sweet love from the night’s dew-bowl.
The tint of the fleecy clouds of morn
Came out of the flushing tide of its heart,
And lay on its cheek with artless art—
The fairest blush that ever was born.
’Twas when the rose was full in bloom
I passed along that wilding lane
When love upon the winds was vain,
The desert air its deathless tomb.
I loved the flower and said, “Alas!
’Tis sad to know such love must die,
Such sweetness with the mould must lie,
Such beauty into death must pass!”
I plucked the flower from off its stem
And said, “Sweet Flower! Life were Death
Without thy beauty and thy breath—
The heart must wither else for them.”
I plucked the flower—blest wild rose!—
I set it blooming in my heart,
And said, “Should my sweet rose depart
To-day—the night its dear life close,
“The love it leaves shall ever live,
Shall ever grow, and bloom and bloom,
Shall go with me thro’ Death’s dark gloom,
And hope of glad reunion give.”
The flower, blooming, lived and grew;—
That sweet wild rose is blooming still;
Its beauties every corner fill
That life and love and heart e’er knew.
And should my fond heart ever break,
That sweet wild rose would never die;—
’Twould spring from the mould where it might lie
And the fairest bloom immortal take!
