Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

I sit among the sisters—moments make
Their way to hours, as slowly day by day
Creeps lagging on, as if before them lay
Some evil Thing they feared to overtake;
Our fingers move together swift, but slow
And few the words that fall, like drops that ooze
From springs that in the desert long ago
The drifting sands sucked in; full oft I choose
To hearken if some echo subterrain
Tells where life's hidden streams in darkness yet
Flow on; but all is silent, and again
I look and see each face before me set—
A dial-plate with mosses long o'ergrown,
And finger that still duly round the stone
Moves on to point to nothing; then I thank
My own, if it from theirs hath caught this blank
Impenetrable aspect, and so lies
A scroll outspread, yet locking from their eyes
(Though writ within, without) the precious lore
They would but shrink from; yet my heart runs o'er
With pity and with love, for these were made
For noble creatures, that within the shade
Kept by man's fraud, and cheated of their right
In the Great Father's heritage of light

And warmth, have shrunk to mildewed forms like these;
So will they die, methinks, and never know
What life was made of, till they pass above
To sun themselves for ever in the Love
Whose blessed reflex they have missed below.

And in the stillness oft my fancies please
To frame similitudes, as like a pall
This silence wraps our spirits, one and all;
Yet theirs, methinks, is Polar silence froze
Unto the centre; snows piled up on snows
'Mid icy seas where glimmer to the moon
Cold shapeless forms, and wrecks that to and fro
Drift aimless on; but like a Torrid noon
Is mine, begirt with stillness like to death,
Where large-leaved flowers upon the burning air
Hang motionless, and drink its fiery breath;
And every beast lies couched within its lair,
And bird with folded wing; yet listen! there
A pulse beats audibly, a murmur rife
Above, beneath, this sultry hush profound
Is quickening on the sense, and at a sound
Will flash and kindle, all instinct with Life!