Renascence and Other Poems | Page 4

its breast beneath the head?Of one who is so gladly dead.?And all at once, and over all?The pitying rain began to fall;?I lay and heard each pattering hoof?Upon my lowly, thatched roof,?And seemed to love the sound far more?Than ever I had done before.?For rain it hath a friendly sound?To one who's six feet underground;?And scarce the friendly voice or face:?A grave is such a quiet place.
The rain, I said, is kind to come?And speak to me in my new home.?I would I were alive again?To kiss the fingers of the rain,?To drink into my eyes the shine?Of every slanting silver line,?To catch the freshened, fragrant breeze?From drenched and dripping apple-trees.?For soon the shower will be done,?And then the broad face of the sun?Will laugh above the rain-soaked earth?Until the world with answering mirth?Shakes joyously, and each round drop?Rolls, twinkling, from its grass-blade top.?How can I bear it; buried here,?While overhead the sky grows clear?And blue again after the storm??O, multi-colored, multiform,?Beloved beauty over me,?That I shall never, never see?Again! Spring-silver, autumn-gold,?That I shall never more behold!?Sleeping your myriad magics through,?Close-sepulchred away from you!?O God, I cried, give me new birth,?And put me back upon the earth!?Upset each cloud's gigantic gourd?And let the heavy rain, down-poured?In one big torrent, set me free,?Washing my grave away from me!
I ceased; and through the breathless hush?That answered me, the far-off rush?Of herald wings came whispering?Like music down the vibrant string?Of my ascending prayer, and -- crash!?Before the wild wind's whistling lash?The startled storm-clouds reared on high?And plunged in terror down the sky,?And the big rain in one black wave?Fell from the sky and struck my grave.?I know not how such things can be;?I only know there came to me?A fragrance such as never clings?To aught save happy living things;?A sound as of some joyous elf?Singing sweet songs to please himself,?And, through and over everything,?A sense of glad awakening.?The grass, a-tiptoe at my ear,?Whispering to me I could hear;?I felt the rain's cool finger-tips?Brushed tenderly across my lips,?Laid gently on my sealed sight,?And all at once the heavy night?Fell from my eyes and I could see, --?A drenched and dripping apple-tree,?A last long line of silver rain,?A sky grown clear and blue again.?And as I looked a quickening gust?Of wind blew up to me and thrust?Into my face a miracle?Of orchard-breath, and with the smell, --?I know not how such things can be! --?I breathed my soul back into me.?Ah! Up then from the ground sprang I?And hailed the earth with such a cry?As is not heard save from a man?Who has been dead, and lives again.?About the trees my arms I wound;?Like one gone mad I hugged the ground;?I raised my quivering arms on high;?I laughed and laughed into the sky,?Till at my throat a strangling sob?Caught fiercely, and a great heart-throb?Sent instant tears into my eyes;?O God, I cried, no dark disguise?Can e'er hereafter hide from me?Thy radiant identity!?Thou canst not move across the grass?But my quick eyes will see Thee pass,?Nor speak, however silently,?But my hushed voice will answer Thee.?I know the path that tells Thy way?Through the cool eve of every day;?God, I can push the grass apart?And lay my finger on Thy heart!
The world stands out on either side?No wider than the heart is wide;?Above the world is stretched the sky, --?No higher than the soul is high.?The heart can push the sea and land?Farther away on either hand;?The soul can split the sky in two,?And let the face of God shine through.?But East and West will pinch the heart?That can not keep them pushed apart;?And he whose soul is flat -- the sky?Will cave in on him by and by.
Interim
The room is full of you! -- As I came in?And closed the door behind me, all at once?A something in the air, intangible,?Yet stiff with meaning, struck my senses sick! --
Sharp, unfamiliar odors have destroyed?Each other room's dear personality.?The heavy scent of damp, funereal flowers, --?The very essence, hush-distilled, of Death --?Has strangled that habitual breath of home?Whose expiration leaves all houses dead;?And wheresoe'er I look is hideous change.?Save here. Here 'twas as if a weed-choked gate?Had opened at my touch, and I had stepped?Into some long-forgot, enchanted, strange,?Sweet garden of a thousand years ago?And suddenly thought, "I have been here before!"
You are not here. I know that you are gone,?And will not ever enter here again.?And yet it seems to me, if I should speak,?Your silent step must wake across the hall;?If I should turn my head, that your sweet eyes?Would kiss me from the door. -- So short a time?To teach my life its transposition to?This difficult and unaccustomed key! --?The room is as you left it; your last touch --?A thoughtless pressure, knowing not itself?As saintly -- hallows now each simple thing;?Hallows and glorifies, and