Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

It hath gone forth, the all-o'erwhelming word;
Through the void silence of my heart it pealed:
It hath gone forth, even though thou hast not heard,
The exiles' doom to everlasting sealed.

For other eyes the sun shall bend his course,
The sweet surprise of his fair seasons bringing,
In other veins the blood shall gather force,
With voice of birds and happy flowers upspringing:

While we, thrust forth from regions warm and clear
And sunny seas that far between us roll,
Inhabit each our several mansions drear,
The Arctic thou, and I the Antarctic pole.

100

II.

I would to God, my darling, you and I
Were somewhere lying very silently
Beneath the green sod of a mountain glen,
A place untilled and far from feet of men,
Yet not with stones made rough, not harsh and bare,
But greensward slopes with scattered woodland fair:
And there should be no birds to mock at us
With their full notes of descant amorous;
No nightingales should madden the sweet air
With passion such as ours in days that were:
For that is long since over and quite gone,
And our hearts can but ache to think thereon.

101

But sometimes when a still night flooded all
That serene place with moonlight mystical,
Then might we feel the heart of the great Earth
Beating through ours in peace that knows not mirth:
For that mild light should be to her more kind
Than parching sunshine or the strenuous wind:
And is not she too weary of the weight
Of her great being and mysterious fate,
And wearier ever of the restless race
Of foolish men, that for the little space
Of their poor lives are hurrying to and fro
To vex their souls with ever-gathering woe?
And so perchance in such sweet night and still
Likewise through us might some dim memory thrill
Of days forgotten long and far away,
When in her breast first without form we lay,
And no power yet had quickened heart and brain
To this immense capacity of pain.

102

LOVE AND DEATH.

I.

Of all the songs the birds sang,
But one remains with me,
The song to which the words rang
Of an ancient elegy.

Of all the powers that moved me,
My heart remembereth
But one, even Love, that loved me,
And one that hated, Death.

Why call the voices yonder
That stirred my soul of yore?
Leave me to dream and ponder
And image o'er and o'er

103

The haloed hair that crowned her
With a crown of Paradise,
The grace that flowed around her
From the sweet and suasive eyes,

The voice as soft and tender
As the still sea on the sands,
The supple form and slender,
And the little loving hands.

106

III.

Far up a lonely mountain glen
That sleeps between the folded hills,
There lies a glade unknown to men,
Where even the brook her babbling stills.

The brook becomes a brimming pool,
And beech and oak with meeting shade
Whisper across the waters cool
The blisses of that quiet glade.

The solitary dewfalls wet
Green turf below, green leaves above;
And there, 'mid those green leaves, was set
The dwelling of a gentle dove.

107

To that sweet bird, that peaceful place,
With winged steps my feet would fly;
And there we dreamed away the days,
The happy days, my dove and I.

One eve I hasted to the grove;
My thought would fain my feet outrun;
But as I neared the place of love
A sudden cloud obscured the sun:

No murmured welcome could I hear;
The pulses of my heart were quelled:
And lo, upon the streamlet clear
A floating feather I beheld.

A thunderbolt had cleft the oak
Wherein my bird had built her nest:
No other tree had felt the stroke
But that one home, that only breast.

108

That glade shall never greet again
My feet that wander wearily,
Nor sound nor sight appease my pain,
Since my loved bird is lost to me.