University of Virginia Library

OVER MY GRAVE.

The Spirit moved me and I spoke
Of many thoughts and things,
Just as its music in me woke
And wafted ready wings.
Great windows opened in my brain
And let a Presence in,
Which stirred to Beauty and its pain
And was to all akin.
I had no purpose of my own
Except to do my part,
And gather fruit which God had sown
With sorrow in my heart.
He softly breathed on me in song,
And thence I faltered out
Eternal hatred of the wrong,
If dimly and by doubt.
I was His lute, a humble chord
Whereon He played at will,
And only echoed back His Word
Though jarred and jangled still.
And all my worst and wildest airs,
That murmured dark and low,
Yet strove to climb the altar stairs
Whence life and healing flow.
And if I ever uttered right,
Or sent one saving note
To help a brother, His the might
Which through my weakness wrote.
And when I wandered from His seat
Or found but cruel scars,
It was my foolish wings that beat
Against their prison bars.
I would too often go my way
And blundered from His tune,
Which had I let the Master play
Had turned all winter June.
I sang of children and the poor
In flickering swallow flight,
And in the rudeness of the boor
I showed a jewel bright.
The mystery of Nature wrought
On me, to syllable
By bridges of my quarried thought
The awful miracle.
The humour at the heart of life
Was often on my lip,
Which peeped in laughter out of strife
And curbed the cruel whip.
I saw it growing out of grief
Forbidding me be dull,
While making tears their own relief,
And grinning from the skull.
Though still in every note I struck
I knew a ruling Hand,
And from its holding seemed to pluck
The sweetness of the land.
Till I was all respondent strings
Whereon a Law was laid,
Which marked the melody of things
And babbled what it said.