University of Virginia Library

A RHYMED HOMILY.

In the wintry twilight and firelight I sat in my chamber, and there
Musing I watched through the casement, in the still December air,
“As a cloud, and as doves to the windows,” the white-winged feathery snow,
Like a spectral apparition, glide downward soft and slow.
The flakes fell pure and noiseless all over the bare brown land,
A downy mantle weaving, by God's mysterious hand,
The naked earth to cover, and tenderly to keep
The limbs of the weary mother through her long winter sleep.
So Heaven, I thought, lets gently the mantle of mercy fall,
And drops the veil of oblivion on the sins and sorrows of all;
And the white-winged angel of pity comes down through the wintry gloom
Of a world unbelief hath blighted, and whispers of spring-time's bloom.
And I thought how this tranquil snow-fall, as a white cloth, would cover the bier
Where soon should lie stark and rigid the dead and discrownèd year,
And how graciously alighted the flakes on Memory's graves,
Where rested the dead in their haven from life's tumultuous waves.
And I read in the snow-flakes an emblem how man's generations flee,
And sink and melt in the ocean of cold mortality.
And the sad-eyed angel of Memory moistened with a tear
The cheek of Hope, her sister, as they waited the coming year.
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I sat in the wintry twilight and mused by the chimney's glow,
And watched the sparks fly upward, as downward fluttered the snow.
Fitfully darted upward these “sons of the burning coals,”—
Flew up and vanished in darkness, like hopes of human souls.
As I sat gazing and musing, the crackling fire burned on,
And another flame within me on the world of the spirit shone.
“Yes, man is born to trouble, as the sparks fly upward,” I said;
“So short-lived, restless, and fitful, how quickly his years are fled!
But is this, then, the whole of the story the spark-swarms tell in their flight,
Ere their brief and bright trail upward is quenched in the smoky night?
Yes, man is born to trouble; but the sparks that upward fly
Give sign in their upward motion of man's true home on high.
The shred of flesh may wither, and melt like snow in the sea;
But the spark of the soul, ascending, inherits eternity.
Life's trials and tribulations—not out of the dust they come;
The troubles that man is born to are angels to point him home.
They come from the faithful Father, to teach man the upward road
That leads, though steep and rugged, to Heaven's serene abode.”
And thus, in my fireside musings, now sate with me angels three,—
The angels of Hope and Remembrance and Immortality.