In Flanders Fields | Page 5

look forth with unregretful eyes,
Where
sleep Montcalm and Wolfe beside her gate?
Then and Now

Beneath her window in the fragrant night
I half forget how truant
years have flown
Since I looked up to see her chamber-light,
Or
catch, perchance, her slender shadow thrown
Upon the casement; but
the nodding leaves
Sweep lazily across the unlit pane,
And to and
fro beneath the shadowy eaves,
Like restless birds, the breath of
coming rain
Creeps, lilac-laden, up the village street
When all is
still, as if the very trees
Were listening for the coming of her feet

That come no more; yet, lest I weep, the breeze
Sings some forgotten
song of those old years
Until my heart grows far too glad for tears.
Unsolved
Amid my books I lived the hurrying years,
Disdaining kinship with
my fellow man;
Alike to me were human smiles and tears,
I cared
not whither Earth's great life-stream ran,
Till as I knelt before my
mouldered shrine,
God made me look into a woman's eyes;
And I,
who thought all earthly wisdom mine,
Knew in a moment that the
eternal skies
Were measured but in inches, to the quest
That lay
before me in that mystic gaze.
"Surely I have been errant: it is best

That I should tread, with men their human ways."
God took the
teacher, ere the task was learned,
And to my lonely books again I
turned.
The Hope of My Heart
"Delicta juventutis et ignorantius ejus, quoesumus ne memineris,
Domine."
I left, to earth, a little maiden fair,
With locks of gold, and eyes that
shamed the light;
I prayed that God might have her in His care
And sight.
Earth's love was false; her voice, a siren's song;
(Sweet mother-earth
was but a lying name)
The path she showed was but the path of

wrong
And shame.
"Cast her not out!" I cry. God's kind words come --
"Her future is
with Me, as was her past;
It shall be My good will to bring her home
At last."
Penance
My lover died a century ago,
Her dear heart stricken by my sland'rous
breath,
Wherefore the Gods forbade that I should know
The peace of death.
Men pass my grave, and say, "'Twere well to sleep,
Like such an one,
amid the uncaring dead!"
How should they know the vigils that I
keep,
The tears I shed?
Upon the grave, I count with lifeless breath,
Each night, each year,
the flowers that bloom and die,
Deeming the leaves, that fall to
dreamless death,
More blest than I.
'Twas just last year -- I heard two lovers pass
So near, I caught the
tender words he said:
To-night the rain-drenched breezes sway the
grass
Above his head.
That night full envious of his life was I,
That youth and love should
stand at his behest;
To-night, I envy him, that he should lie

At utter rest.
Slumber Songs
I
Sleep, little eyes
That brim with childish tears amid thy play,
Be
comforted! No grief of night can weigh
Against the joys that throng
thy coming day.
Sleep, little heart!
There is no place in Slumberland for tears:
Life
soon enough will bring its chilling fears
And sorrows that will dim
the after years.
Sleep, little heart!
II
Ah, little eyes
Dead blossoms of a springtime long ago,
That life's
storm crushed and left to lie below
The benediction of the falling
snow!
Sleep, little heart
That ceased so long ago its frantic beat!
The years
that come and go with silent feet
Have naught to tell save this -- that
rest is sweet.
Dear little heart.
The Oldest Drama
"It fell on a day, that he went out to his father to the reapers. And he
said unto his father, My head, my head. And he said to a lad, Carry him
to his mother. And . . . he sat on her knees till noon, and then died. And
she went up, and laid him on the bed. . . . And shut the door upon him
and went out."
Immortal story that no mother's heart
Ev'n yet can read, nor feel the
biting pain
That rent her soul! Immortal not by art
Which makes a
long past sorrow sting again
Like grief of yesterday: but since it said
In simplest word the truth

which all may see,
Where any mother sobs above her dead
And
plays anew the silent tragedy.
Recompense
I saw two sowers in Life's field at morn,
To whom came one in angel
guise and said,
"Is it for labour that a man is born?
Lo: I am Ease.
Come ye and eat my bread!"
Then gladly one forsook his task undone

And with the Tempter went his slothful way,
The other toiled until
the setting sun
With stealing shadows blurred the dusty day.
Ere harvest time, upon earth's peaceful breast
Each laid him down
among the unreaping dead.
"Labour hath other recompense than rest,

Else were the toiler like the fool," I said;
"God meteth him not less,
but rather more
Because he sowed and others reaped his store."
Mine Host
There stands a hostel by a travelled way;
Life is the road and Death
the worthy host;
Each guest he greets, nor