Personal Poems II, vol 4, part 2 | Page 9

the gray exorcist's
ban,
Walk, unappeased, the chambered Vatican,
And draw the
curtains of Napoleon's bed!
God's providence is not blind, but, full of
eyes,
It searches all the refuges of lies;
And in His time and way,

the accursed things
Before whose evil feet thy battle-gage
Has
clashed defiance from hot youth to age
Shall perish. All men shall be
priests and kings,
One royal brotherhood, one church made free
By
love, which is the law of liberty
1869.
TO LYDIA MARIA CHILD,
ON READING HER POEM IN "THE STANDARD."
Mrs. Child wrote her lines, beginning, "Again the trees are clothed in
vernal green," May 24, 1859, on the first anniversary of Ellis Gray
Loring's death, but did not publish them for some years afterward,
when I first read them, or I could not have made the reference which I
did to the extinction of slavery.
The sweet spring day is glad with music,
But through it sounds a
sadder strain;
The worthiest of our narrowing circle
Sings Loring's
dirges o'er again.
O woman greatly loved! I join thee
In tender memories of our friend;

With thee across the awful spaces
The greeting of a soul I send!
What cheer hath he? How is it with him?
Where lingers he this weary
while?
Over what pleasant fields of Heaven
Dawns the sweet
sunrise of his smile?
Does he not know our feet are treading
The earth hard down on
Slavery's grave?
That, in our crowning exultations,
We miss the
charm his presence gave?
Why on this spring air comes no whisper
From him to tell us all is
well?
Why to our flower-time comes no token
Of lily and of
asphodel?
I feel the unutterable longing,
Thy hunger of the heart is mine;
I
reach and grope for hands in darkness,
My ear grows sharp for voice

or sign.
Still on the lips of all we question
The finger of God's silence lies;

Will the lost hands in ours be folded?
Will the shut eyelids ever rise?
O friend! no proof beyond this yearning,
This outreach of our hearts,
we need;
God will not mock the hope He giveth,
No love He
prompts shall vainly plead.
Then let us stretch our hands in darkness,
And call our loved ones
o'er and o'er;
Some day their arms shall close about us,
And the old
voices speak once more.
No dreary splendors wait our coming
Where rapt ghost sits from
ghost apart;
Homeward we go to Heaven's thanksgiving,
The
harvest-gathering of the heart.
1870.
THE SINGER.
This poem was written on the death of Alice Cary. Her sister Phoebe,
heart-broken by her loss, followed soon after. Noble and richly gifted,
lovely in person and character, they left behind them only friends and
admirers.
Years since (but names to me before),
Two sisters sought at eve my
door;
Two song-birds wandering from their nest,
A gray old
farm-house in the West.
How fresh of life the younger one,
Half smiles, half tears, like rain in
sun!
Her gravest mood could scarce displace
The dimples of her
nut-brown face.
Wit sparkled on her lips not less
For quick and tremulous tenderness;

And, following close her merriest glance,
Dreamed through her
eyes the heart's romance.

Timid and still, the elder had
Even then a smile too sweetly sad;

The crown of pain that all must wear
Too early pressed her midnight
hair.
Yet ere the summer eve grew long,
Her modest lips were sweet with
song;
A memory haunted all her words
Of clover-fields and singing
birds.
Her dark, dilating eyes expressed
The broad horizons of the west;

Her speech dropped prairie flowers; the gold
Of harvest wheat about
her rolled.
Fore-doomed to song she seemed to me
I queried not with destiny
I
knew the trial and the need,
Yet, all the more, I said, God speed?
What could I other than I did?
Could I a singing-bird forbid?
Deny
the wind-stirred leaf? Rebuke
The music of the forest brook?
She went with morning from my door,
But left me richer than before;

Thenceforth I knew her voice of cheer,
The welcome of her partial
ear.
Years passed: through all the land her name
A pleasant household
word became
All felt behind the singer stood
A sweet and gracious
womanhood.
Her life was earnest work, not play;
Her tired feet climbed a weary
way;
And even through her lightest strain
We heard an undertone of
pain.
Unseen of her her fair fame grew,
The good she did she rarely knew,

Unguessed of her in life the love
That rained its tears her grave
above.
When last I saw her, full of peace,
She waited for her great release;

And that old friend so sage and bland,
Our later Franklin, held her

hand.
For all that patriot bosoms stirs
Had moved that woman's heart of
hers,
And men who toiled in storm and sun
Found her their meet
companion.
Our converse, from her suffering bed
To healthful themes of life she
led
The out-door world of bud and bloom
And light and sweetness
filled her room.
Yet evermore an underthought
Of loss to come within us wrought,

And all the while we felt the strain
Of the strong will that conquered
pain.
God giveth quietness at last!
The common way that all have passed

She went, with mortal yearnings fond,
To