CRADLE SONG
In the embers shining bright
A garden grows for thy delight,
With roses yellow, red, and white.
But, O my child, beware, beware!
Touch not the blossoms blowing there,
For every rose a thorn doth bear.
NINE years to heaven had flown,
And June came, with June's token
The wild rose that had known
A maiden's silence broken.
'T was thus the lover spoke,
And thus she leaned and listened (Below, the billows broke,
The blue sea shook and glistened): –
"We have been happy, Love,
Through bright and stormy weather,
Happy all hope above,
For we have been together.
"To meet, to love, to wed,
Joy without stint or measure,
This was our lot," he said,
"To find untouched our treasure;
"But had some blindfold fate
Bound each unto another
To turn from Heaven's gate,
Each heart-throb hide and smother!
"O dear and faithful heart,
If thus had we been fated;
To meet, to know, to part-
Too early, falsely, mated!
"Were this our bitter plight,
Ah, could we have dissembled?"
Her cheek turned pale with fright;
She hid her face, and trembled.
"BACK FROM THE DARKNESS TO THE LIGHT AGAIN"
"BACK from the darkness to the light again!" Not from the darkness, Love, for hadst thou lain Within the shadowy portal of the tomb,
Thy light had warmed the darkness into bloom.
I FLUNG a stone into a grassy field;
How many tiny creatures there may yield
(I thought) their petty lives through that rude shock! To me a pebble, 't is to them a rock —
Gigantic, cruel, fraught with sudden death.
Perhaps it crusht an ant, perhaps its breath
Alone tore down a white and glittering palace,
And the small spider damns the giant's malice
Who wrought the wreck blasted his pretty art!
Who knows what day some saunterer, light of heart, An idle wanderer through the fields of space, Large-limbed, big-brained, to whom our puny race
Seems small as insects, one whose footstep jars
On some vast world-orb islanded by stars,
May fling a stone and crush our earth to bits,
And all that men have builded by their wits?
"Ah, what a loss!" you say; our bodies go,
But not our temples, statues, and the glow
Of glorious canvases; and not the pages
Our poets have illumed through myriad ages.
What boots the insect's loss? Another day
Will see the selfsame ant-hill and the play
Of light on dainty web the same. But blot
All human art from this terrestrial plot,
Something indeed would pass that nevermore
Would light the universe as once before!"
The spider's work is not original, –
You hold, but what of ours? I fear that all
We do is just the same thing over and over.
Take Life: you have the woman and her lover;
'Tis old as Eden; naught is new in that!
Take Building, and you reach ere long the flat
Nile desert sands, by way of France, Rome, Greece.
And there is poetry - our bards increase
In numbers, not in sweetness, not in force,
Since he, sublimest poet of this globe,
Forgotten now, poured forth the chant of Job-
Where Man with the Eternal holds discourse.
No, no! The forms may change, but even they
Come round again. Could we but truly scan it,
We'd find in the heavens some little, busy planet,
Whence all we are was borrowed. If to-day
The imagined giant flung his ponderous stone,
And we and all our far-stretched schemes were done,
His were a scant remorse and short-lived trouble,
Like mine for those small creatures in the stubble.
"WE MET UPON THE CROWDED WAY”
We met upon the crowded way;
We spoke and past. How bright the day
Turned from that moment, for a light
Did shine from her to make it bright!
And then I asked: Can such as she
From life be blotted utterly?
The thoughts from those clear eyes that dawn
Down to the ground can they be drawn?
Among the mighty who can find
One that hath a perfect mind?
Angry, jealous, curst by feuds,
They own the sway of fatal moods;
But thou dost perfect seem to me
In thy divine simplicity.
Tho' from the heavens the stars be wrenched,
Thy light, dear maid, shall not be quenched.
Gentle, and true, and pure, and free
The gods will not abandon thee!
THE WHITE AND THE RED ROSE
IN Heaven's happy bowers
There blossom two flowers,
One with fiery glow
And one as white as snow;
While lo! before them stands,
With pale and trembling hands,
A spirit who must choose
One, and one refuse.
THE WHITE AND THE RED ROSE
O, tell me of these flowers
That bloom in heavenly bowers,
One with fiery glow,
And one as white as snow!
And tell me who is this
In Heaven's holy bliss
Who trembles and who cries
Like a mortal soul that dies!
These blossoms two,
Wet with heavenly dew
The Gentle Heart is one,
And one is Beauty's own;
And the spirit here that stands,
With pale and trembling hands,
Before to-morrow's morn
Will be a child new-born,
Will be a mortal maiden
With earthly sorrows laden;
But of these shining flowers
That bloom in heavenly bowers,
To-day she still may choose
One, and one refuse.
Will she pluck the crimson flower
And win Beauty's dower?
Will she choose the better part
And gain the Gentle Heart?
Awhile she weeping waits
Within those pearly gates;
Alas! the mortal maiden
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