Along the Shore | Page 3

is the joy we know,?We follow memory when life is done:?No wave is lost in all the tides that flow.
WHY SAD TO-DAY?
Why is the nameless sorrowing look?So often thought a whim??God-willed, the willow shades the brook,?The gray owl sings a hymn;
Sadly the winds change, and the rain?Comes where the sunlight fell:?Sad is our story, told again,?Which past years told so well!
Why not love sorrow and the glance?That ends in silent tears??If we count up the world's mischance,?Grieving is in arrears.
Why should I know why I could weep??The old urns cannot read?The names they wear of kings they keep?In ashes; both are dead.
And like an urn the heart must hold?Aims of an age gone by:?What the aims were we are not told;?We hold them, who knows why?
THE GHOSTS OF REVELLERS.
At purple eyes beside the grain,?Our loves on altars we had burned,?And mixed our tribute with the dew,?Our tears, when rosy dawn returned.
Our voices we had joined with song?Of bird ecstatic, light, and free;?Our laughter rollicked with the brook?Running through darkness merrily.
At purple eyes beside the rim?Of frozen lakes our loves we burned,?And slid away when stillness reigned:?Deep the vast woods our bodies urned.
In starlit night along the shade?Of our dusk tombs our spirits glide;?We hear the echoing of the wind,?We breathe the sighs we living sighed.
LIFE'S BURYING-GROUND.
My graveyard holds no once-loved human forms,?Grown hideous and forgotten, left alone,?But every agony my heart has known,--?The new-born trusts that died, the drift of storms.
I visit every day the shadowy grove;?I bury there my outraged tender thought;?I bring the insult for the love I sought,?And my contempt, where I had tried to love.
BEYOND UTTERANCE.
There in the midst of gloom the church-spire rose,?And not a star lit any side of heaven;?In glades not far the damp reeds coldly touched?Their sides, like soldiers dead before they fall;?There in the belfry clung the sleeping bat,--?Most abject creature, hanging like a leaf?Down from the bell-tongue, silent as the speech?The dead have lost ere they are laid in graves.
A melancholy prelude I would sing?To song more drear, while thought soars into gloom.?Find me the harbor of the roaming storm,?Or end of souls whose doom is life itself!?So vague, yet surely sad, the song I dream?And utter not. So sends the tide its roll,--?Unending chord of horror for a woe?We but half know, even when we die of it.
THE SUICIDE.
A shadowed form before the light,?A gleaming face against the night,?Clutched hands across a halo bright?Of blowing hair,--her fixed sight?Stares down where moving black, below,?The river's deathly waves in murmurous silence flow.
The moon falls fainting on the sky,?The dark woods bow their heads in sorrow,?The earth sends up a misty sigh:?A soul defies the morrow!
FOR OTHERS.
Weeping for another's woe,?Tears flow then that would not flow?When our sorrow was our own,?And the deadly, stiffening blow?Was upon our own heart given?In the moments that have flown!
Cringing at another's cry?In the hollow world of grief?Stills the anguish of our pain?For the fate that made us die?To our hopes as sweet as vain;?And our tears can flow again!
One storm blows the night this way,?But another brings the day.
ZEST.
Labor not in the murky dell,?But till your harvest hill at morn;?Stoop to no words that, rank and fell,?Grow faster than the rustling corn.
With gladdening eyes go greet the sun,?Who lifts his brow in varied light;?Bring light where'er your feet may run:?So bring a day to sorrow's night.
THE UNPERFECTED.
A broken mirror in a trembling hand;?Sad, trembling lips that utter broken thought:?One of a wide and wandering, aimless band;?One in the world who for the world hath naught.
A heart that loves beyond the shallow word;?A heart well loved beyond its flowerless worth:?One who asks God to answer the prayer heard;?One from the dust returning to the earth.
Can miracle ne'er make the mirror whole?For one who, seeing, could be nobly bold??Who could well die, to magnify the soul,--?Whose strength of love will shake the graveyard's mould?
GOD-MADE.
Somewhere, somewhere in this heart?There lies a jewel from the sea,?Or from a rock, or from the sand,?Or dropped from heaven wondrously.
Oh, burn, my jewel, in my glance!?Oh, shimmer on my lips in prayer!?Light my love's eyes to read my soul,?Which, wrapt in ashes, yet is fair!
When dead I lie, forgotten, deep?Within the earth and sunken past,?Still shall my jewel light my dust,--?The worth God gives us, first and last!
A SONG BEFORE GRIEF.
Sorrow, my friend,?When shall you come again??The wind is slow, and the bent willows send?Their silvery motions wearily down the plain.?The bird is dead?That sang this morning through the summer rain!
Sorrow, my friend,?I owe my soul to you.?And if my life with any glory end?Of tenderness for others, and the words are true,?Said, honoring, when I'm dead,--?Sorrow, to you, the mellow praise, the funeral?wreath, are due.
And yet, my friend,?When love and joy are strong,?Your terrible visage from my sight I rend?With glances to