The Closing Scene

"Shall I have naught that is fair?” saith he;

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"Have naught but the bearded grain? Though the breath of these flowers is sweet to me, I will give them all back again."

He gazed at the flowers with tearful eyes,

He kissed their drooping leaves;

It was for the Lord of Paradise

He bound them in his sheaves.

"My Lord has need of these flowerets gay,"
The Reaper said, and smiled;
"Dear tokens of the earth are they,
Where He was once a child.

"They shall all bloom in fields of light,
Transplanted by my care,

And saints, upon their garments white,
These sacred blossoms wear."

And the mother gave, in tears and pain,
The flowers she most did love;

She knew she should find them all again
In the fields of light above.

Oh, not in cruelty, not in wrath,
The Reaper came that day;

'Twas an angel visited the green earth,
And took the flowers away.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow [1807-1882]

THE CLOSING SCENE

WITHIN his sober realm of leafless trees,
The russet year inhaled the dreamy air;
Like some tanned reaper in his hour of ease,
When all the fields are lying brown and bare.

The gray barns looking from their hazy hills
O'er the dim waters widening in the vales,
Sent down the air a greeting to the mills,
On the dull thunder of alternate flails.

All sights were mellowed and all sounds subdued, The hills seemed farther and the streams sang low; As in a dream the distant woodman hewed

His winter log with many a muffled blow.

The embattled forests, erewhile armed in gold,
Their banners bright with every martial hue,
Now stood, like some sad, beaten host of old,
Withdrawn afar in Time's remotest blue.

On slumbrous wings the vulture held his flight;
The dove scarce heard his sighing mate's complaint,
And like a star slow drowning in the light,

The village church-vane seemed to pale and faint.

The sentinel-cock upon the hillside crew,—
Crew thrice, and all was stiller than before,—
Silent till some replying warder blew

His alien horn, and then was heard no more.

Where erst the jay, within the elm's tall crest,
Made garrulous trouble round her unfledged young,
And where the oriole hung her swaying nest,
By every light wind like a censer swung—

Where sang the noisy masons of the eaves,
The busy swallows, circling ever near,
Foreboding, as the rustic mind believes,

An early harvest and a plenteous year;—

Where every bird which charmed the vernal feast,
Shook the sweet slumber from its wings at morn,

To warn the reaper of the rosy east,

All now was songless, empty, and forlorn.

Alone from out the stubble piped the quail,

And croaked the crow through all the dreamy gloom; Alone the pheasant, drumming in the vale,

Made echo to the distant cottage loom.

The Closing Scene

There was no bud, no bloom upon the bowers;

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The spiders wove their thin shrouds night by night; The thistle-down, the only ghost of flowers,

Sailed slowly by, passed noiseless out of sight.

Amid all this, in this most cheerless air,

And where the woodbine shed upon the porch Its crimson leaves, as if the Year stood there Firing the floor with his inverted torch;—

Amid all this, the center of the scene,

The white-haired matron, with monotonous tread,
Plied the swift wheel, and with her joyless mien,
Sat, like a Fate, and watched the flying thread.

She had known Sorrow, he had walked with her,
Oft supped, and broke the bitter ashen crust;
And in the dead leaves still she heard the stir
Of his black mantle trailing in the dust.

While yet her cheek was bright with summer bloom,
Her country summoned and she gave her all;
And twice War bowed to her his sable plume,-
Re-gave the swords to rust upon the wall.

Re-gave the swords,-but not the hand that drew
And struck for Liberty its dying blow,

Nor him who, to his sire and country true,
Fell 'mid the ranks of the invading foe.

Long, but not loud, the droning wheel went on,
Like the low murmur of a hive at noon;
Long, but not loud, the memory of the gone

Breathed through her lips a sad and tremulous tune.

At last the thread was snapped,-her head was bowed; Life dropped the distaff through his hands serene;— And loving neighbors smoothed her careful shroud, While Death and Winter closed the autumn scene. Thomas Buchanan Read [1822-1872]

MORS ET VITA

We know not yet what life shall be,
What shore beyond earth's shore be set;
What grief awaits us, or what glee,
We know not yet.

Still, somewhere in sweet converse met,
Old friends, we say, beyond death's sea
Shall meet and greet us, nor forget

Those days of yore, those years when we
Were loved and true,-but will death let
Our eyes the longed-for vision see?

We know not yet.

Samuel Waddington [1844

"WHAT IS TO COME"

WHAT is to come we know not. But we know That what has been was good-was good to show, Better to hide, and best of all to bear.

We are the masters of the days that were:

We have lived, we have loved, we have suffered .

even so.

Shall we not take the ebb who had the flow?

Life was our friend.

Now, if it be our foe—

Dear, though it spoil

and break us!-need we care

What is to come?

Let the great winds their worst and wildest blow,
Or the gold weather round us mellow slow:
We have fulfilled ourselves, and we can dare,
And we can conquer, though we may not share

In the rich quiet of the after-glow

What is to come.

William Ernest Henley [1849-1903]

"When the Most is Said"

A ROUNDEL OF REST

If rest is sweet at shut of day
For tired hands and tired feet,
How sweet at last to rest for aye,
If rest is sweet!

We work or work not through the heat:
Death bids us soon our labors lay
In lands where night and twilight meet.

When the last dawns are fallen gray
And all life's toil and ease complete,
They know who work, not they who play,
If rest is sweet.

Arthur Symons [1865

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"WHEN THE MOST IS SAID"

WHAT'S love, when the most is said? The flash of the lightning fleet,

Then, darkness that shrouds the soul,-but the earth is firm to my feet;

The rocks and the tides endure, the grasses and herbs re

turn,

The path to my foot is sure, and the sods to my bosom yearn.

What's fame, when the truth is told? A shout to a distant hill,

The crags may echo a while, but fainter, and fainter still; Yet forever the wind blows wide the sweetness of all the

skies,

The rain cries and the snow flies, and the storm in its bosom lies.

What's life, what's life, little heart? A dream when the nights are long,

Toil in the waking days,―tears, and a kiss, a song.