Along the Shore | Page 4

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 blue heaven. Hovering
along,
By mine your shadow led,
"Away!" I shriek, "nor dare to
work my new-sprung mercies wrong!"
Still, you are near:
Who can your care withstand?
When deep
eternity shall look most clear,
Sending bright waves to kiss the
trembling land,
My joy shall disappear,--
A flaming torch thrown to
the golden sea by your pale hand.
PRIDE: FATE.
Lullaby on the wing
Of my song, O my own!
Soft airs of evening

Join my song's murmuring tone.
Lullaby, O my love!
Close your eyes, lake-like clear;
Lullaby,
while above
Wake the stars, with heaven near.

Lullaby, sweet, so still
In arms of death; I alone
Sing lullaby, like a
rill,
To your form, cold as a stone.
Lullaby, O my heart!
Sleep in peace, all alone;
Night has come, and
your part
For loving is wholly done!
FRANCIE.
I loved a child as we should love
Each other everywhere;
I cared
more for his happiness
Than I dreaded my own despair.
An angel asked me to give him
My whole life's dearest cost;
And in
adding mine to his treasures
I knew they could never be lost.
To his heart I gave the gold,
Though little my own had known;
To
his eyes what tenderness
From youth in mine had grown!
I gave him all my buoyant
Hope for my future years;
I gave him
whatever melody
My voice had steeped in tears.
Upon the shore of darkness
His drifted body lies.
He is dead, and I
stand beside him,
With his beauty in my eyes.
I am like those withered petals
We see on a winter day,
That gladly
gave their color
In the happy summer away.
I am glad I lavished my worthiest
To fashion his greater worth;

Since he will live in heaven,
I shall lie content in the earth.
LOST REALITY.
O soul of life, 't is thee we long to hear,
Thine eyes we seek for, and
thy touch we dream;
Lost from our days, thou art a spirit near,--

Life needs thine eloquence, and ways supreme.
More real than we
who but a semblance wear,
We see thee not, because thou wilt not
seem!

CLOSING CHORDS.
I.
Death's Eloquence.
When I shall go
Into the narrow home that leaves
No room for
wringing of the hands and hair,
And feel the pressing of the walls
which bear
The heavy sod upon my heart that grieves,
(As the
weird earth rolls on),
Then I shall know
What is the power of
destiny. But still,
Still while my life, however sad, be mine,
I war
with memory, striving to divine
Phantom to-morrows, to outrun the
past;
For yet the tears of final, absolute ill
And ruinous knowledge
of my fate I shun.
Even as the frail, instinctive weed
Tries, through
unending shade, to reach at last
A shining, mellowing, rapture-giving
sun;
So in the deed of breathing joy's warm breath,
Fain to succeed,

I, too, in colorless longings, hope till death.
II.
Peace.
An angel spoke with me, and lo, he hoarded
My falling tears to cheer
a flower's face!
For, so it seems, in all the heavenly space
A wasted
grief was never yet recorded.
Victorious calm those holy tones
afforded
Unto my soul, whose outcry, in disgrace,
Changed to low
music, leading to the place
Where, though well armed, with futile end
awarded,
My past lay dead. "Wars are of earth!" he cried;

"Endurance only breathes immortal air.
Courage eternal, by a world
defied,
Still wears the front of patience, smooth and fair."
Are wars
so futile, and is courage peace?
Take, then, my soul, thus gently thy
release!
GRACE.

Ill-wrought life we look at as we die!
Mistaken, selfish, meagre, and
unmeet;
So graven on the hearts that cruelly
We have deprived of
many an hour sweet:
O ill-wrought life we look at as we die!
O day of God we look at as we die!
Grace, like a river flowing toward
our feet;
Wide pardon blowing with the breezes by;
Love telling us
bright tales of the Complete;--
While listening, hoping, thanking, lo,
we die!
ENDLESS RESOURCE.
New days are dear, and cannot be unloved,
Though in deep grief we
mourn, and cling to death;
Who has not known, in living on, a breath

Of infinite joy that has life's rapture proved?
If I have thought that in this rainbow world
The best we see was but a preface given
Of infinite greater tints in
heaven,
And life or no, heaven yet would be unfurl'd,--
I did belie the soul-wide joys of earth,
And feelings deep as lights that dwell in seas.
Can heaven itself
outlove such depths as these?
Live on! Life holds