By Still Waters | Page 5

above Come by me, wandering, whispering, beseeching love;?As in the twilight children gather close and press?Nigh and more nigh with shadowy tenderness,?Feeling they know not what, with noiseless footsteps glide Seeking familiar lips or hearts to dream beside.?O voices, I would go with you, with you, away,?Facing once more the radiant gateways of the day;?With you, with you, what memories arise, and nigh?Trampling the crowded figures of the dawn go by,?Dread deities, the giant powers that warred on men?Grow tender brothers and gay children once again;?Fades every hate away before the Mother's breast?Where all the exiles of the heart return to rest.
A NEW BEING
I know myself no more, my child,?Since thou art come to me,?Pity so tender and so wild?Hath wrapped my thoughts of thee.
These thoughts, a fiery gentle rain,?Are from the Mother shed,?Where many a broken heart hath lain?And many a weeping head.
THE MAN TO THE ANGEL
I have wept a million tears:?Pure and proud one, where are thine,?What the gain though all thy years?In unbroken beauty shine?
All your beauty cannot win?Truth we learn in pain and sighs:?You can never enter in?To the circle of the wise.
They are but the slaves of light?Who have never known the gloom,?And between the dark and bright?Willed in freedom their own doom.
Think not in your pureness there,?That our pain but follows sin:?There are fires for those who dare?Seek the throne of might to win.
Pure one, from your pride refrain:?Dark and lost amid the strife?I am myriad years of pain?Nearer to the fount of life.
When defiance fierce is thrown?At the God to whom you bow,?Rest the lips of the Unknown?Tenderest upon my brow.
ENDURANCE
He bent above: so still her breath?What air she breathed he could not say,?Whether in worlds of life or death:?So softly ebbed away, away?The life that had been light to him,?So fled her beauty leaving dim?The emptying chambers of his heart?Thrilled only by the pang and smart,?The dull and throbbing agony?That suffers still, yet knows not why.?Love's immortality so blind?Dreams that all things with it conjoined?Must share with it immortal day:?But not of this--but not of this--?The touch, the eyes, the laugh, the kiss,?Fall from it and it goes its way.?So blind he wept above her clay,?'I did not think that you could die.?Only some veil would cover you?Our loving eyes could still pierce through;?And see through dusky shadows still?Move as of old your wild sweet will,?Impatient every heart to win?And flash its heavenly radiance in.'?Though all the worlds were sunk in rest?The ruddy star within his breast?Would croon its tale of ancient pain,?Its sorrow that would never wane,?Its memory of the days of yore?Moulded in beauty evermore.?Ah, immortality so blind,?To dream all things with it conjoined?Must follow it from star to star?And share with it immortal years.?The memory, yearning, grief, and tears,?Fall from it and it goes afar.?He walked at night along the sands,?And saw the stars dance overhead,?He had no memory of the dead,?But lifted up exultant hands?To hail the future like a boy,?The myriad paths his feet might press.?Unhaunted by old tenderness?He felt an inner secret joy!?A spirit of unfettered will?Through light and darkness moving still?Within the All to find its own,?To be immortal and alone.
THE VESTURE OF THE SOUL
I pitied one whose tattered dress?Was patched, and stained with dust and rain;?He smiled on me; I could not guess?The viewless spirit's wide domain.
He said, 'The royal robe I wear?Trails all along the fields of light:?Its silent blue and silver bear?For gems the starry dust of night.'
'The breath of joy unceasingly?Waves to and fro its folds starlit,?And far beyond earth's misery?I live and breathe the joy of it.'
THE TWILIGHT OF EARTH
The wonder of the world is o'er:?The magic from the sea is gone:?There is no unimagined shore,?No islet yet to venture on.?The Sacred Hazels' blooms are shed,?The Nuts of Knowledge harvested.
Oh, what is worth this lore of age?If time shall never bring us back?Our battle with the gods to wage?Reeling along the starry track.?The battle rapture here goes by?In warring upon things that die.
Let be the tale of him whose love?Was sighed between white Deirdre's breasts,?It will not lift the heart above?The sodden clay on which it rests.?Love once had power the gods to bring?All rapt on its wild wandering.
We shiver in the falling dew,?And seek a shelter from the storm:?When man these elder brothers knew?He found the mother nature warm,?A hearth fire blazing through it all,?A home without a circling wall.
We dwindle down beneath the skies,?And from ourselves we pass away:?The paradise of memories?Grows ever fainter day by day.?The shepherd stars have shrunk within,?The world's great night will soon begin.
Will no one, ere it is too late,?Ere fades the last memorial gleam,?Recall for us our earlier state??For nothing but so vast a dream?That it would scale the steeps of air?Could rouse us from so vast despair.
The power is ours to