A LAST LULLABY.
INTO the rose-worlds of reverie, fairest, come follow me;
Cleave with me close to the skirts of the slackening day:
Be, ere the billows of blissfulness shadow and swallow me,
Hand in hand, heart in heart, woven with me for the Way.
Hark, on the strings of the harp of the sunsetting breezes,
Wafted, the voice of the Viewless for burden is borne,
Willing us steer with the sun to the lands where love's ease is,
Fare with night's feet to the shores of the shadowless morn!
Far in the fathomless gold upon gold of the setting,
See, where the love-lands arise from an ocean of rest,
Havens of peace and of healing, fiords of forgetting,
Ports of soul-solacement, infinite isles of the blest!
There, in those meadows and harbours of azure unmeasured,
Sojourns of sorrow sublimed and of peace after pain,
There not a dream of our days and our nights but is treasured,
There not a hope of our hearts but is garnered again.
See, where the dear ones of old, of whom death hath bereft me,
All who forewent me in faring the shadow-ward ways,
All their fair faces, the friends who have loved me and left me,
Shine in the hovering sheen of the sunsetting haze!
Hark, how they call to me! See, how they beckon and sign to me,
Bidding me launch with the light on the westering wave,
Lapse from this life, which was ever but passion and pine to me,
Steer to the shores where the peace is, the rest which I crave!
Hear'st thou, my soul, how they hail from the sunsetting towers?
Seest how they beckon me sever from bondage and strife?
Feel'st how my feet are impelled by invisible powers?
Thou alone holdest me fast in the fetters of life.
'Ware of the waves and the breezes, that watch to bereave thee!
Hold thou my hand, lest I drown in the halcyon deep:
Clip thou me close, O thou love of my loves, lest I leave thee,
Drawn of the dreams, lest I sink in the surges of sleep!
What, O my heart, were heav'n worth to me, save thou wert there with me?
Even to Paradise will me not pass without thee.
Come with me, comfort me, company, follow and fare with me;
Steer my soul's bark through the brume and the surge of Death's sea.
