Imagens da página
PDF
ePub
[merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

THERE is a dungeon in whose dim drear light What do I gaze on? Nothing: look again! Two forms are slowly shadowed on my sight, Two insulated phantoms of the brain : It is not so; I see them full and plain, An old man and a female young and fair, Fresh as a nursing mother, in whose vein The blood is nectar: but what doth she there, With her unmantled neck, and bosom white and bare?

Full swells the deep pure fountain of young life, Where on the heart and from the heart we took Our first and sweetest nurture, when the wife, Blest into mother, in the innocent look, Or even the piping cry of lips that brook No pain and small suspense, a joy perceives Man knows not, when from out its cradled nook She sees her little bud put forth its leaves — What may the fruit be yet? I know not - Cain was Eve's.

But here youth offers to old age the food, The milk of his own gift: it is her sire To whom she renders back the debt of blood Born with her birth. No! he shall not expire While in those warm and lovely veins the fire Of health and holy feeling can provide Great Nature's Nile, whose deep stream rises higher Than Egypt's river ;- from that gentle side Drink, drink and live, old man! Heaven's realm

[ocr errors]
[blocks in formation]

Mountains and seas divide us, but I claim

No tears, but tenderness to answer mine :

Go where I will, to me thou art the same,

A loved regret which I would not resign. There yet are two things in my destiny, A world to roam through, and a home with thee.

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

Yet this was not the end I did pursue;

Surely I once beheld a nobler aim.
But all is over; I am one the more
To baffled millions which have gone before.

And for the future, this world's future may
From me demand but little of my care;
I have outlived myself by many a day :

Having survived so many things that were;
My years have been no slumber, but the prey
Of ceaseless vigils; for I had the share
Of life which might have filled a century,
Before its fourth in time had passed me by.

[blocks in formation]

BERTHA IN THE LANE. PUT the broidery-frame away, For my sewing is all done! The last thread is used to-day, And I need not join it on. Though the clock stands at the noon, I am weary! I have sewn, Sweet, for thee, a wedding-gown.

Sister, help me to the bed,

And stand near me, dearest-sweet!
Do not shrink nor be afraid,
Blushing with a sudden heat!
No one standeth in the street!
By God's love I go to meet,

Love I thee with love complete.

Lean thy face down! drop it in

These two hands, that I may hold "Twixt their palms thy cheek and chin, Stroking back the curls of gold. "T is a fair, fair face, in sooth, Larger eyes and redder mouth Than mine were in my first youth!

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

Till the pleasure, grown too strong,
Left me muter evermore;
And, the winding road being long,
I walked out of sight, before;
And so, wrapt in musings fond,
Issued (past the wayside pond)
On the meadow-lands beyond.

I sat down beneath the beech
Which leans over to the lane,
And the far sound of your speech
Did not promise any pain;
And I blessed you, full and free,
With a smile stooped tenderly
O'er the May-flowers on my knee.

But the sound grew into word

As the speakers drew more near
Sweet, forgive me that I heard
What you wished me not to hear.
Do not weep so, do not shake-
O, I heard thee, Bertha, make
Good true answers for my sake.

Yes, and he too! let him stand

In thy thoughts, untouched by blame. Could he help it, if my hand

He had claimed with hasty claim !
That was wrong perhaps, but then
Such things be- and will, again!

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small]

And that hour- beneath the beach -
When I listened in a dream,

And he said, in his deep speech,
That he owed me all esteem

Each word swam in on my brain

With a dim, dilating pain,

Till it burst with that last strain.

I fell flooded with a dark,

In the silence of a swoon;
When I rose, still, cold, and stark,
There was night, I saw the moon ;
And the stars, each in its place,
And the May-blooms on the grass,
Seemed to wonder what I was.

And I walked as if apart
From myself when I could stand,
And I pitied my own heart,

As if I held it in my hand
Somewhat coldly, with a sense
Of fulfilled benevolence,
And

a "Poor thing" negligence.

And I answered coldly too,
When you met me at the door;
And I only heard the dew

Dripping from me to the floor;
And the flowers I bade you see
Were too withered for the bee, -
As my life, henceforth, for me.

[blocks in formation]

Then I always was too grave,
Liked the saddest ballads sung,
With that look, besides, we have
In our faces who die young.
I had died, dear, all the same,
Life's long, joyous, jostling game
Is too loud for my meek shame.

We are so unlike each other,

Thou and I, that none could guess We were children of one mother, But for mutual tenderness. Thou art rose-lined from the cold, And meant, verily, to hold Life's pure pleasures manifold.

I am pale as crocus grows

Close beside a rose-tree's root! Whosoe'er would reach the rose, Treads the crocus underfoot;

[blocks in formation]

When I wear the shroud I made, Let the folds lie straight and neat, And the rosemary be spread, That if any friend should come, (To see thee, sweet!) all the room May be lifted out of gloom.

And, dear Bertha, let me keep

On my hand this little ring, Which at nights, when others sleep, I can still see glittering.

Let me wear it out of sight,

In the grave, — where it will light
All the dark up, day and night.

[blocks in formation]
[ocr errors]
[blocks in formation]

COME to me, O my Mother! come to me,
Thine own son slowly dying far away!
Through the moist ways of the wide ocean, blown
By great invisible winds, come stately ships
To this calm bay for quiet anchorage;
They come, they rest awhile, they go away,
But, O my Mother, never comest thou !

As a peculiar darling? Lo, the flies
Hum o'er him! Lo, a feather from the crow
Falls in his parted lips! Lo, his dead eyes
See not the raven! Lo, the worm, the worm
Creeps from his festering corse! My God! my
God!

O Lord, Thou doest well. I am content.
If Thou have need of him he shall not stay.
But as one calleth to a servant, saying
"At such a time be with me," so, O Lord,
Call him to Thee! O, bid him not in haste
Straight whence he standeth. Let him lay aside
The soiléd tools of labor. Let him wash

His hands of blood. Let him array himself
Meet for his Lord, pure from the sweat and fume
Of corporal travail ! Lord, if he must die,
Let him die here. O, take him where Thou gavest !

And even as once I held him in my womb

The snow is round thy dwelling, the white snow, Till all things were fulfilled, and he came forth,
That cold soft revelation pure as light,
And the pine-spire is mystically fringed,
Laced with incrusted silver. Here-ah me!
The winter is decrepit, underborn,

A leper with no power but his disease.
Why am I from thee, Mother, far from thee?
Far from the frost enchantment, and the woods
Jewelled from bough to bough? O home, my
home !

O river in the valley of my home,
With mazy-winding motion intricate,
Twisting thy deathless music underneath
The polished ice-work, must I nevermore
Behold thee with familiar eyes, and watch
Thy beauty changing with the changeful day,
Thy beauty constant to the constant change?

DAVID GRAY.

THE ABSENT SOLDIER SON. 66 FROM THE ROMAN."

LORD, I am weeping. As Thou wilt, O Lord,
Do with him as Thou wilt; but O my God,
Let him come back to die! Let not the fowls
O' the air defile the body of my child,
My own fair child, that when he was a babe,
I lift up in my arms and gave to Thee!
Let not his garment, Lord, be vilely parted,
Nor the fine linen which these hands have spun
Fall to the stranger's lot! Shall the wild bird,
That would have pilfered of the ox, this year
Disdain the pens and stalls? Shall her blind

young,

That on the fleck and moult of brutish beasts

Had been too happy, sleep in cloth of gold Whereof each thread is to this beating heart

So, O Lord, let me hold him in my grave
Till the time come, and Thou, who settest when
The hinds shall calve, ordain a better birth;
And as I looked and saw my son, and wept
For joy, I look again and see my son,
And weep again for joy of him and Thee!

THE FAREWELL

SIDNEY DOBELL.

OF A VIRGINIA SLAVE MOTHER TO HER DAUGHTERS SOLD INTO SOUTHERN BONDAGE.

GONE, gone, sold and gone,

To the rice-swamp dank and lone.
Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings,
Where the noisome insect stings,
Where the fever demon strews
Poison with the falling dews,
Where the sickly sunbeams glare
Through the hot and misty air,

Gone, gone, - sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia's hill and waters,
Woe is me, my stolen daughters!

Gone, gone, sold and gone,

To the rice-swamp dank and lone.
There no mother's eye is near them,
There no mother's ear can hear them;
Never, when the torturing lash
Seams their back with many a gash,
Shall a mother's kindness bless them,
Or a mother's arms caress them.

Gone, gone, sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia's hills and waters,
Woe is me, my stolen daughters!

« AnteriorContinuar »