AT DEATH'S DOOR. On every scene mine eyes had known, The sudden splendor flashed and shone: The woodland places, dim and sweet, The evening hearth, the candle-light, The dark, unmeasured, rushing sea, The alien city's solitude, Its paven ways, its turmoil rude. Uprose each face of friend or foe, The swift reproach, the look askance, All hours of life! but last the hour Then earthward light and vision died, What then I saw transcends thy speech: 25 ON EASTER MORN. I HAD not known that I was dead, By the quick grass above my head, "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 I said, "One thing deny me not: Then in the dim and sighing hour They wrought together-blade and flower- 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 It joyed to lave In the bead of the wave, And watch the great sky in its mirror glassed; 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 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; 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, 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, |