A rose choked in the grass; an hour of fears;
The gusts that past a darkening shore do beat;
The burst of music down an unlistening street-
I wonder at the idleness of tears.

Ye old, old dead, and ye of yesternight,

Chieftains, and bards, and keepers of the sheep,
By every cup of sorrow that you had,

Loose me from tears, and make me see aright
How each hath back what once he stayed to weep;
Homer his sight, David his little lad!

Lizette Woodworth Reese [1856

VERS LA VIE

The statue by Victor Rosseau in the Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels

ANGEL, hast thou betrayed me? Long ago
In the Forgotten Land of souls that wait,
Thou leddest me to the outward-folding gate,
Bidding me live. I leaned into the flow
Of earthward-rushing spirits, fain to know
What are humanity and human fate

Of which the rumor reached to where we sate

In our cool, hidden, dreamless ante-glow.
But I learn not, and am bewildered here

To know why thou with seeming-kindly hands
Didst let me forth, explorer of a star

Where all is strange, and very often Fear
Urges retreat to that Forgotten Land's

Unthoughtful shores where thou and Silence are!

Arthur Upson [1877–190S]

LIFE

WE are born; we laugh; we weep;

We love; we droop; we die!

Ah! wherefore do we laugh or weep?

Why do we live, or die?

Who knows that secret deep?

Alas, not I!

Pre-existence

Why doth the violet spring
Unseen by human eye?

Why do the radiant seasons bring
Sweet thoughts that quickly fly?
Why do our fond hearts cling
To things that die?

We toil, through pain and wrong;
We fight, and fly;

We love; we lose; and then, ere long,

Stone-dead we lie.

O life! is all thy song

"Endure and-die?"

2747

Bryan Waller Procter [1787-1874]

PRE-EXISTENCE

WHILE sauntering through the crowded street,

Some half-remembered face I meet,

Albeit upon no mortal shore

That face, methinks, has smiled before.

Lost in a gay and festal throng,
I tremble at some tender song,

Set to an air whose golden bars
I must have heard in other stars.

In sacred aisles I pause to share
The blessing of a priestly prayer,—

When the whole scene which greets mine eyes
In some strange mode I recognize,

As one whose every mystic part
I feel prefigured in my heart.

At sunset, as I calmly stand,
A stranger on an alien strand,

Familiar as my childhood's home

Seems the long stretch of wave and foam.

One sails toward me o'er the bay,
And what he comes to do and say

I can foretell. A prescient lore
Springs from some life outlived of yore.

O swift, instinctive, startling gleams
Of deep soul-knowledge! not as dreams

For aye ye vaguely dawn and die,
But oft with lightning certainty

Pierce through the dark, oblivious brain,
To make old thoughts and memories plain-

Thoughts which perchance must travel back
Across the wild, bewildering track

Of countless æons; memories far,
High-reaching as yon pallid star,

Unknown, scarce seen, whose flickering grace
Faints on the outmost rings of space!

Paul Hamilton Hayne [1830-1886]

With the Orient in her eyes,
Life my mistress lured me on.
"Knowledge," said that look of hers,
"Shall be yours when all is done."

The Petrified Fern

Like a pomegranate in halves,

"Drink me," said that mouth of hers,

And I drank who now am here

Where

my dust with dust confers.

Bliss Carman [1861

2749

THE PETRIFIED FERN

IN a valley, centuries ago,

Grew a little fern-leaf, green and slender,
Veining delicate and fibers tender;

Waving when the wind crept down so low.

Rushes tall, and moss, and grass grew round it,
Playful sunbeams darted in and found it,
Drops of dew stole in by night, and crowned it,
But no foot of man e'er trod that way;
Earth was young, and keeping holiday.

Monster fishes swam the silent main,

Stately forests waved their giant branches, Mountains hurled their snowy avalanches, Mammoth creatures stalked across the plain; Nature reveled in grand mysteries,

But the little fern was not of these,

Did not number with the hills and trees;

Only grew and waved its wild sweet way,—
No one came to note it day by day.

Earth, one time, put on a frolic mood,

Heaved the rocks and changed the mighty motion Of the deep, strong currents of the ocean;

Moved the plain and shook the haughty wood,

Crushed the little fern in soft moist clay,
Covered it, and hid it safe away.

Oh, the long, long centuries since that day!
Oh, the changes! Oh, life's bitter cost,
Since that useless little fern was lost!

Useless? Lost? There came a thoughtful man
Searching Nature's secrets, far and deep;

From a fissure in a rocky steep
He withdrew a stone, o'er which there ran

Fairy pencilings, a quaint design,
Veinings, leafage, fibers clear and fine.
And the fern's life lay in every line!
So, I think, God hides some souls away,
Sweetly to surprise us, the last day.

Mary Bolles Branch [1840

THE QUESTION WHITHER
WHEN we have thrown off this old suit,
So much in need of mending,

To sink among the naked mute,
Is that, think you, our ending?
We follow many, more we lead,
And you who sadly turf us,
Believe not that all living seed
Must flower above the surface.

Sensation is a gracious gift,

But were it cramped to station,
The prayer to have it cast adrift,
Would spout from all sensation.
Enough if we have winked to sun,

Have sped the plow a season;
There is a soul for labor done,
Endureth fixed as reason.

Then let our trust be firm in Good,
Though we be of the fasting;
Our questions are a mortal brood,

Our work is everlasting.

We children of Beneficence

Are in its being sharers;

And Whither vainer sounds than Whence,

For word with such wayfarers.

George Meredith [1828-1909]

THE GOOD GREAT MAN

How seldom, friend, a good great man inherits
Honor or wealth, with all his worth and pains!