Fulfillment, still withheld all seekers here;—
For never have we seen perfection nor
The glory we are ever seeking for:
But we
have
seen—all mortal souls as
one—
Have seen its
promise
, in the morning sun—
Its blest assurance, in the stars of night;—
The ever-dawning of the dark to light;—
The tears down-falling from all eyes that grieve—
The eyes uplifting from all
deeps of grief,
Yearning for what at last we shall receive....
Lord, I believe:
Help Thou mine
unbelief.
We must believe—
For still all unappeased our hunger goes,
From life's first waking, to its last repose:
The briefest life of any babe, or man
Outwearing even the allotted span,
Is each a life unfinished—incomplete:
For these, then, of th' outworn, or unworn feet
Denied one toddling step—O there must be
Some fair, green, flowery pathway endlessly
Winding through lands Elysian! Lord, receive
And lead each as Thine Own
Child—even the Chief
Of us who didst Immortal life achieve....
Lord, I believe:
Help Thou mine
unbelief.
A GOOD MAN
A good man never dies—
In worthy deed and
prayer
And helpful hands, and honest eyes,
If smiles or tears be
there:
Who lives for you and me—
Lives for the world he
tries
To help—he lives eternally.
A good man never
dies.
Who lives to bravely take
His share of toil and
stress,
And, for his weaker fellows' sake,
Makes every burden
less,—
He may, at last, seem worn—
Lie fallen—hands and
eyes
Folded—yet, though we mourn and mourn,
A good man never
dies.
THE OLD DAYS
The old days—the far days—
The overdear and
fair!—
The old days—the lost days—
How lovely they
were!
The old days of Morning,
With the dew-drench on the
flowers
And apple-buds and blossoms
Of those old days of
ours.
Then was the
real
gold
Spendthrift Summer
flung;
Then was the
real
song
Bird or Poet sung!
There was never censure then,—
Only honest
praise—
And all things were worthy of it
In the old days.
There bide the true friends—
The first and the
best;
There clings the green grass
Close where they
rest:
Would they were here? No;—
Would we were
there!...
The old days—the lost days—
How lovely they
were!
A SPRING SONG AND A LATER
She sang a song of May for me,
Wherein once more I
heard
The mirth of my glad infancy—
The orchard's earliest
bird—
The joyous breeze among the trees
New-clad in leaf and
bloom,
And there the happy honey-bees
In dewy gleam and
gloom.
So purely, sweetly on the sense
Of heart and spirit
fell
Her song of Spring, its influence—
Still
irresistible,—
Commands me here—with eyes ablur—
To mate her bright
refrain.
Though I but shed a rhyme for her
As dim as Autumn
rain.
KNEELING WITH HERRICK
Dear Lord, to Thee my knee is bent--
Give me
content—
Full-pleasured with what comes to me,
Whate'er it be:
An humble roof—a frugal board,
And simple hoard;
The wintry fagot piled beside
The chimney wide,
While the enwreathing flames up-sprout
And twine about
The brazen dogs that guard my hearth
And household worth:
Tinge with the ember's ruddy glow
The rafters low;
And let the sparks snap with delight,
As fingers might
That mark deft measures of some tune
The children croon:
Then, with good friends, the rarest few
Thou boldest true,
Ranged round about the blaze, to share
My comfort
there,—
Give me to claim the service meet
That makes each seat
A place of honor, and each guest
Loved as the rest.
THE RAINY MORNING
The dawn of the day was dreary,
And the lowering clouds
o'erhead
Wept in a silent sorrow
Where the sweet sunshine lay
dead;
And a wind came out of the eastward
Like an endless sigh of
pain,
And the leaves fell down in the pathway
And writhed in the falling
rain.
I had tried in a brave endeavor
To chord my harp with the
sun,
But the strings would slacken ever,
And the task was a weary
one:
And so, like a child impatient
And sick of a
discontent,
I bowed in a shower of teardrops
And mourned with the
instrument.
And lo! as I bowed, the splendor
Of the sun bent over
me,
With a touch as warm and tender
As a father's hand might
be:
And even as I felt its presence,
My clouded soul grew
bright,
And the tears, like the rain of morning,
Melted in mists of
light.
REACH YOUR HAND TO ME
Reach your hand to me, my friend,
With its heartiest
caress—
Sometime there will come an end
To its present
faithfulness—
Sometime I may ask in
vain
For the touch of it
again,
When between us land or
sea
Holds it ever back from
me.
Sometime I may need it so,
Groping somewhere in the
night,
It will seem to me as though
Just a touch, however
light,
Would make all the darkness
day,
And along some sunny
way
Lead me through an
April-shower
Of my tears to this fair
hour.
O the present is too sweet
To go on forever
thus!
Round the corner of the street
Who can say what waits for
us?—
Meeting—greeting, night
and day,
Faring each the selfsame
way—
Still somewhere the path must
end.—
Reach your hand to me, my
friend!
TO MY OLD FRIEND, WILLIAM LEACHMAM
Fer forty year and better you have been a friend to me,
Through days of sore afflictions and dire adversity,
You allus had a kind word of counsul to impart,
Which was like a healin' 'intment to the sorrow of my hart.
When I burried my first womern, William Leachman, it was you
Had the only consolation that I could listen to—
Fer I knowed you had gone through it and had rallied from the blow,
And when you said I'd do the same, I knowed you'd ort to know.
But that time I'll long remember; how I wundered here and thare—
Through the settin'-room and kitchen, and out in the open air—
And the snowflakes whirlin', whirlin', and the fields a frozen glare,
And the neghbors' sleds and wagons congergatin' ev'rywhare.
I turned my eyes to'rds heaven, but the sun was hid away;
I turned my eyes to'rds earth again, but all was cold and gray;
And the clock, like ice a-crackin', clickt the icy hours in two—
And my eyes'd never thawed out ef it hadn't been fer you!
We set thare by the smoke-house—me and you out thare alone—
Me a-thinkin'—you a-talkin' in a soothin' undertone—
You a-talkin'—me a-thinkin' of the summers long ago,
And a-writin' "Marthy—Marthy" with my finger in the snow!
William Leachman, I can see you jest as plane as I could then;
And your hand is on my shoulder, and you rouse me up again,
And I see the tears a-drippin' from your own eyes, as you say:
"Be rickonciled and bear it—we but linger fer a day!"
At the last Old Settlers' Meetin' we went j'intly, you and me—
Your hosses and my wagon, as you wanted it to be;
And sence I can remember, from the time we've neghbored here,
In all sich friendly actions you have double-done your sheer.
It was better than the meetin', too, that nine-mile talk we had
Of the times when we first settled here and travel was so bad;
When we had to go on hoss-back, and sometimes on "Shanks's mare,"
And "blaze" a road fer them behind that had to travel thare.
And now we was a-trottin' 'long a level gravel pike,
In a big two-hoss road-wagon, jest as easy as you
like—
Two of us on the front seat, and our wimmern-folks behind,
A-settin' in theyr Winsor-cheers in perfect peace of mind!
And we pinted out old landmarks, nearly faded out of sight:—
Thare they ust to rob the stage-coach; thare Gash Morgan had the fight
With the old stag-deer that pronged him—how he battled fer his
life,
And lived to prove the story by the handle of his knife.
Thare the first griss-mill was put up in the Settlement, and we
Had tuck our grindin' to it in the Fall of
Forty-three—
When we tuck our rifles with us, techin' elbows all the way,
And a-stickin' right together ev'ry minute, night and day.