O GRANDLY flowing River! O gay, oblivious River! The eyes and skies so blue O stern impassive River! As the night-winds moan and rave. A WOMAN'S LOVE. A SENTINEL angel sitting high in glory Heard this shrill wail ring out from Purgatory: "Have mercy, nighty angel, hear my story! Hint more than all the sages say, Or poets sing, of death or life! For, truth half drawn from Nature's breast, Through subtlest types of form and tone, Outweigh what man at most hath guessed, While heeding his own heart alone. And midway betwixt heaven and us Stands Nature, in her fadeless grace, Still pointing to our Father's house, His glory on her mystic face! WINDLESS RAIN. THE rain, the desolate rain! Ceaseless, and solemn, and chill! How it drips on the misty pane, How it drenches the darkened sill! O scene of sorrow and dearth! I would that the wind awaking To a fierce and gusty birth Might vary this duil refrain Of the rain, the desolate rain: For the heart of heaven seems breaking In tears o'er the fallen earth, We list to the sombre strain, The rain, the murmurous rain! Weary, passionless, slow, 'Tis the rhythm of settled sorrow, "T is the sobbing of cureless woe! And all the tragic life, The pathos of Long-Ago, Comes back on the sad refrain Of the rain, the dreary rain, Till the graves in my heart unclose And the dead who are buried there From a solemn and weird repose Awake, but with eyeballs drear, And voices that melt in pain On the tide of the plaintive rain, The yearning, hopeless rain, The long, low, whispering rain? |