The Rainbow and the Rose | Page 3

the East.
So, Silence reconciles Life's jarring phrases
Far in the future, austere
and august:
Meanwhile, the buds of the poplars are falling,
Spring's
on the lawn, and a little voice calling:
"Daddy, come out! Daddy
darling, you must!
Daddy come out and help Molly pick daisies!"

And, since one's here, and the Spring's in the garden
(How many lives
hence will that thought earn pardon?)

Since one's a man and man's
heart is insistent,
And, since Nirvana is doubtful and distant,


Though life's a hard road and thorny to travel--
Stones in the borders
and grass on the gravel,
Still there's the wisdom that wise men call
folly,
Still one can go and pick daisies with Molly!
THE BEATIFIC VISION.
OH God! if I do my duty
And walk in the thorny way,
Will you pay
me with heavens of beauty,
Millions of lives away?
Will you give
me the music of heaven,
And the joy that none understands,
In
place of what life would have given
If I had held out my hands?
I have lived in a narrow prison,
I have writhed 'neath a bitter creed,

And I dare to say that no heaven can pay
The renounced dream and
deed,
But when my life's portal closes,
If you have no heaven to
spare
God! give me a garden of roses,
And some one to walk with
there.
II.
MUMMY WHEAT.
LAID close to Death, these many thousand years,
In this small seed
Life hid herself and smiled;
So well she hid, Death was at least
beguiled,
Set free the grain--and lo! the sevenfold ears!
Warmed by the sun, wooed by the wind's soft word,
Under blue
canopy they hold their state:
For this, ah, was it not worth while to
wait
Through all the centuries of hope deferred?
What could they know who laid the seed with Death
Of this Divine
fruition fixed and planned?
Love--since Life parts us--lend my hand
your hand
And look with me into the eyes of faith.
For here between your hand and mine there lies
A little seed we trust
to Death to keep
Through unimagined centuries of sleep
Until the

day when Life shall bid it rise.
Our harvest waits us. Who knows where or how,
What worlds away,
wrapped in what coil of pain?
But Life shall bid us pluck gold
sevenfold grain
Grown from the love she bids us bury now.
THE BEECH TREE.
MY beautiful beech, your smooth grey coat is trimmed
With letters.
Once, each stood for all things dear
To foolish lovers, dead this many
a year,
Whose lamp of lighted love so soon was dimmed.
You have
seen them come and go,
And heard their kisses and vows
Under
your boughs,
The pitiful vows they swore,
Have seen their poor
tears flow,
Have seen them part; to meet, and to return, no more!
And in old winters, through your branches bare,
The north wind
drove the blue home-scented smoke
That on the glowing Christmas
hearth awoke
Where the old logs, with eager flicker and flare,
Sang
their low crackling song
Of peace and of good will.
The old song is
still,
The old voices have died away,
The hearth has been cold so
long,
And the bright faces dimmed and covered up with clay.
And summer after summer wakes to glow
The ordered pleasance with
the clipped box-hedge,
The drooping lilac by the old moat's edge,

The roses, that throw you kisses from below,
The orchard pink and
white,
The sedge's whispered words,
The nesting birds,
All these
return to revel round your feet.
And in the untroubled night
The
nightingale still sings, the jasmine still is sweet.
My beautiful beech, I carve upon you here
The master-letter which
begins her name
Through whom, to me, the royal summer came,

And nightingale and rose, and all things dear.
And, in some far-off
time,
I shall come here, weary and old,
When the hearth in my heart
is cold
And the birds that nest there flown;

I will remember this

summer in all its prime
And say, "There was a day--
Thank God,
the Giver, an unforgotten day,
When I walked here, not alone,
--O
God of pity and sorrow, not alone!"
IN ABSENCE.
WAKE, do you wake in the dark in the strange far place,
Window
and door not set like the ones we knew,
Leaning your face through
the dark for another face,
Stretching your arms to the arms that are far
from you,
Even as I, through the depth of this darkness, do?
Sleep, do you sleep in the house in the lonely land?
In the lonely
room do you hear no steps draw near?
Do you miss in the darkness
the hand that implores your hand, See through the darkness your last
dream disappear,
And weep, as I weep, in the outer darkness here?
Dream, do you dream? Nay, never a dream will stay,
Never a
phantom is fond, or a vision kind.
Your dreams elude you and fly
through the dark my way,
My dreams fly forth to you whom they
may not find;
And we in the darkness weep, we weep and are left
behind.
SILENCE.
So silent is the world to-night
The lamp gives silence out like light,

The latticed windows open wide
Show silence, like the night, outside:

The nightingale's faint song draws near
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