Imagens da página
PDF
ePub

AT DEATH'S DOOR.

On every scene mine eyes had known,

The sudden splendor flashed and shone:

The woodland places, dim and sweet,
Wherein I set my childish feet;

The evening hearth, the candle-light,
Far beckoning down the Winter night;

The dark, unmeasured, rushing sea,
And youth's wild joy of being free!

The alien city's solitude,

Its paven ways, its turmoil rude.

Uprose each face of friend or foe,
Or stranger's, chance-met long ago

The swift reproach, the look askance,
The laughing gaze, the heart-warm glance!

All hours of life! but last the hour
I name for thee and for love's power!

Then earthward light and vision died,
And the great Door swung still and wide.

What then I saw transcends thy speech:
Its name in Heaven how can I teach!

25

ON EASTER MORN.

I HAD not known that I was dead,
Until I heard it softly said

By the quick grass above my head,
And by the many-budded thorn,
On Easter morn.

"Yea, thou art dead" (these whispered me), "Dead long ago; none seeketh thee;

Thy sealed eyes shall never see

The Lord of Life put death to scorn
On Easter morn."

I said, "One thing deny me not:
With all your bloom and verdure plot
To make my grave the fairest spot
That by His footsteps shall be worn
On Easter morn."

Then in the dim and sighing hour
Ere over darkness light hath power,

They wrought together-blade and flower-
The mould above me to adorn

For Easter morn.

ON EASTER MORN.

I felt His footsteps pause and stay, Felt the sweet, searching light of day. "Rise, grateful dust!" I heard Him say; "For thee have I put death to scorn On Easter morn."

27

SEA-BIRD AND LAND-BIRD.

A LAND-BIRD Would follow a sea-bird's flight
Over the surges and out of sight.

It joyed to lave

In the bead of the wave,

And watch the great sky in its mirror glassed;
And all was well

Till, with measureless swell,

Under the gale rose the waters vast.

Then, baffled and maimed,

With spirit tamed,

The bird 'mid the drift on the shore was cast.

Thou wast that sea-bird strong and light
(Shall a land-bird follow a sea-bird's flight?) –

Wast fledged on high,

Close under the sky;

The wandering cloud would sometimes bend

With billowy breast

Above thy nest,

And in pity moist her substance spend ;

No mate thou couldst find

Like the fierce North Wind,

And the tempest that tried thee most was thy friend!

SEA-BIRD AND LAND-BIRD.

I was that land-bird, frail and slight

(Shall a sea-bird stay for a land-bird's flight?);

Low on the earth

I had my birth,

In a sunny field where the days were long;
There, as I lay,

I heard the spray

Of the grass in June growing deep and strong;

Fast the days flew,

And I followed, too;

And saluted the sun with my

slender song!

Hear me, thou sea-bird, matchless in flight,
Shaping thy course o'er the surges white!
In the making of things,

Strength fell to thy wings,

So that thou shouldst not falter nor tire

When beating abroad;

The breath of a god

Was breathed through thy form,

To me, out of heaven,

No fire was given,

29

an enduring fire:

Nor strength, but only the rover's desire!

Shall a land-bird follow a sea-bird's flight

Over the surges and out of sight?

The Maker of things

Has touched my wings,

And taken from me my blind unrest!

Now am I blent

With the fields' content,

« AnteriorContinuar »